The Innocent (Clan of the Woodlands Book 2)

by V. K. Ludwig

  Ruth hid her face behind a wall of fingers. Autumn bore her grim reaper stare into me, but I didn’t care. At least not at first — until she sunk her head, snuffled and wiped her palm across her cheek in one lightning-fast movement. Did I make her…

  “I didn’t make you cry, did I?” I asked.

  “Just shut up.”

  A wet sparkle rimmed her eyes. Shit! “I think it’s time for me to leave.”

  Both women still sat wordlessly at the table while I punched my fists into the sleeves of my jacket, but we all startled when three loud knocks sounded from the door.

  I peeked at Ruth who jumped up and stroked stray hair out of her face. She tugged the sleeves on her sweater, sighed and answered the door.

  “I heard shouts and wanted to see if everything is alright with you and the, uh, you know…” a concerned voice sounded from outside.

  “Oh, hey Caroline.” Ruth pushed herself through the narrow gap and closed the door behind her. Only mutters made it through the wooden door, but even those made it clear my outburst had worried those who shared a wall with Ruth.

  The noise of anxious footsteps who hurried through the hall made me turn on my heels, but all my eyes could glimpse were tips of red hair which disappeared into a bedroom. The door fell into its lock with a bam and shook the framed first-place science fair certificate on the wall.

  Trapped between a furious woman and a neighbor on edge, I leaned against the wall, sitting out the storms which rampaged on each side.

  Great job messing it all up, Max.

  I shook my head and rubbed the bridge of my nose. All I could hope for now was that Ruth didn’t document this mess. Otherwise, I would go down in history as the guy who couldn’t save humankind over the question if a woman always ate that much. Or if there was something wrong with her.

  Clearly, something was indeed wrong, and it didn’t take a psychologist to pinpoint the location of the issue. Mom would have called it spoiled rotten.

  A squeal came from Autumn’s room and made me jump to attention. She didn’t injure herself, did she? What if she slipped in her hygiene pod?

  I peeked at the apartment door. Nothing, other than the relentless mumbles of Ruth who spoke in a soft and calm tone.

  Someone had to check on her, but what if she really slipped? Dressed in nothing but her birthday suit… the thought tingled my skin. I shrugged it off as an overdose of adrenaline.

  I knocked on the door, and when no answer came, I stepped straight into her room, expecting her unconscious on the floor. What I found instead made me throw my arms up in a gesture of profound confusion.

  There she stood, fully dressed, her hands stacked on top of her chest, staring at the waves of the interactive screen.

  They rose and fell in an unpredictable rhythm, yet soft and calming. The sun touched the surface, blending parts of the ocean into a fiery orange. Shells lay scattered across the white sand, most of them cream in color, but other more of pale pink.

  “Why on earth did you scream like that? I thought you might have hurt yourself,” I asked, but Autumn didn’t react. Her eyes were so fixated on the pulse of the water, but the way her back straightened told me she sensed how I walked up to her.

  I stood in front of her and gazed into her eyes, now as wet as the ocean behind me, and just as blue. “You okay?”

  “Is this what it really looks like?”

  Turning around I glimpsed at the interactive wall once more. “Only seen a recording once. Wasn’t quite as clean as this one and bustled with people but, yeah, that’s pretty much what it looks like on a perfect day, I guess.”

  “I’ve never seen the ocean before.” She took a step toward the wall and reached her hand out as if she wanted to experience the salty air on her skin. “My mom showed me pictures when I was a kid, but I had no idea it was this beautiful.”

  “You can’t access the ocean from where you are?”

  She shook her head as if in a trance. “We would have to go to the West through the Ash Zones, which isn’t possible of course. They say the East Coast is contaminated by radiation ever since they couldn’t shut down some of the plants properly. And you guys block the ocean to the South.”

  “You could travel toward the North though.”

  She turned to look at me, the contempt from earlier washed away from her face. “We don’t even wanna find out what’s up there.”

  For a fraction of a second I almost pitied her. Those people lived in complete isolation up there, unable to experience things every child in the Districts grew up with. Did she realize what she missed out on, all because of their stubbornness?

  “Check this out,” I said. “Activate interactive wall sound.”

  Seagulls squawked in the distance and lulled the room with their distinct gulls, a nostalgic testimony of the seaside. Waves rolled in like thunder and sucked back into the ocean underneath gurgles.

  And underneath all those melodies, her chest rose and fell with the height of the waves and the depth of the redounds.

  The way everything about her had softened swept a warm numbness over my face. Her soft blue eyes and relaxed posture almost made her look approachable. Almost.

  I said nothing else and left the room, running straight into Ruth.

  “I hope you went in there to apologize,” she said, her arms crossed in front of her chest. She peeked over my shoulder and nodded in the direction of Autumn’s room.

  “She’s busy staring at the interactive wall,” I said.

  “So did you? Apologize?”

  “Why would I?” I opened the apartment door and peeked into the hallway. Left. Clear. Right. Clear. “I didn’t say anything wrong, she is just terribly thin-skinned. It’s annoying beyond belief.”

  “But Max, how are we supposed to find out if the adjusted libido inhibitor works if she won’t agree to help us with the project?”

  “In all honesty, I don’t need a libido inhibitor for her.” I stepped outside and pulled my wool hat down to my ears. “She IS a libido inhibitor.”

  Chapter 9

  Autumn

  We all knew sending me here might be a disaster, but that escalated quicker than an opossum in a hen house. My insides churned, and not because of the gardener who stood in front of me and arranged a dark orange goo atop my fruit bowl.

  “There’s no second chance for a first impression, so all I can do is apologize,” I said.

  I gazed over the men and women who waited in line, their dismay about my presence staring back at me.

  Max wasn’t like them, pinning me down with hostile eyes. Just a bit handicapped when it came to his choice of words. And I jumped straight at his throat like a furious banshee.

  If anything, I might have proven him last night that I was precisely the way these people wanted to portray us: an uncivilized brute with a brain the size of a pomegranate seed.

  Ruth hid a yawn behind her palm and blinked her eyes a few times. Yeah, I got no sleep last night either. The first half of the night I stared at the interactive wall. The second half I drowned in embarrassment.

  She grabbed her fruit salad, pointed at mine, nodded at the guy and left the community garden. Then she handed me a brown-speckled plastic fork.

  “That’s what happens when two entirely different worlds meet. Maybe you two can talk it out while I go and explain the supervisor why my neighbors reported the event,” she said. Ruth left no doubt in her tone that she was pissed.

  With sweaty palms, I pushed my fork into the mix of kale and chunks of fruit, forcing the gooey stuff to the edge with a leaf of greens.

  No matter how hard my brain turned gears, each offering of remorse came out tarred and feathered with excuses. Because I was hungry. Or tired. Or exhausted. Or intimidated.

  Once Ruth pointed at the massive building with the waterfall fountain running over the edge of the third floor, both my brain and stomach lay in knots.

  Apparently, people from the Districts hated stairs. We all crammed ourselves into
yet another elevator, tickling my insides like a dirty joke. I had room to spare, though — being a clanswoman was a bonus during elevator rides!

  I followed along a hallway so brightly lit, I squinted my eyes at the overexposed photographs of yesteryears. Busy diners, a hundred heads of cattle in a crowded corral, a pharmacy and other things we’ve only known from books.

  We reached the lab, and Max hung with one eye over a microscope, a pencil in his hand.

  “You’re late,” he said, his voice stern and professional. His charcoal pants and shirt suited his tedious conversational skills and stood in stark contrast to the white and flowing outfit he wore yesterday.

  Ruth gestured me to place my bowl on a small table beside the door and pulled a row of cages with glass front from the wall. It opened up like a drawer, and rats disappeared underneath shreds of fabric.

  “Please check that bottom drawer over there.” She pointed at the corner of the wall. “There is a metal canister with pellets and a measuring spoon. Each cage gets two of those straight into their feeders. Except for the last one, which gets three.”

  I followed behind Ruth and scooped pellets, while she cleaned the cages and checked if the waterers worked properly.

  “See.” She pushed the drawer of cages back into the wall and gestured at the sink. “I might be late, but I can do the rats in half the time now.”

  We washed our hands, the orange scented soap a welcomed change from the lavender overdose I had to sniff all night.

  She checked her holo-band and threw Max a this-is-all-your-fault look. “I have to be upstairs in ten minutes and iron out your mess. How about you talk to Autumn in the meantime?”

  She walked over and whispered something in his ear, but other than a head shake, he only stared into his microscope with a dedicated lack of interest. Ruth left the lab and pulled the door shut behind her.

  My heartbeat kicked up a notch, placing a sorry right onto my tongue. Someone had to be the bigger person here. I walked over to Max and said, “I’m sorry about how last night turned out. Shouldn’t have been so —”

  “Hostile?”

  I imagined him bathing in this victory, but ignored how my heart now pushed past my ribcage. Bigger. Person. “Sensitive.”

  He moved around his chair a little, just enough to make the wheels roll an inch away from me. Then he angled his body to the right, taking his profile out of my view.

  Crash. The sound of bricks tumbling onto my shoulders, one additional pound at a time. If I couldn’t set this right, I had twelve miserable months waiting for me.

  “Max, people here look at me as if they want to rip out my artery. And I’m not very good with…” my voice lost momentum and turned into a mumble. “I’m not good around strangers. Especially not men I’ve never met. Some sort of reflex I have little control over.”

  His shoulders curved around that microscope of his, and his lips remained shut like a sealed well.

  “There’s so much stuff going on here I don’t agree with, and I guess it overwhelms me a little that I will be part of it for an entire year. Ignoring your core values and ethical beliefs is tough work, you know.”

  At that, he lifted his face off the eyepiece and spotted a rim around his eyes, as if burned into his skin. Clean-shaven, his cheeks looked as if my hand might slip right off if I ever touched them. Not that I had a reason to ever touch them, of course.

  “That insemination isn’t procreation, for example,” I rambled on. “It’s more like an assembly line reproduction of tiny humans. A child should be the product of love.”

  He scratched himself behind the ear with his pencil. “Is everyone in your clan fertile?”

  A weird sensation crawled up my spine leaving me paralyzed. Everyone except for our chieftain. “No.”

  My mind wandered to Rowan, who had tried for years to give Darya that child she desperately wanted.

  “And if one of your couples has troubles conceiving a child the old-fashioned way —”

  “You mean the natural way,” I added.

  “Call it whatever you want.” He leaned back into his chair, letting his gaze wander across my face and back to my eyes. “If insemination could help them solve that issue, would that still count as assembly line reproduction? Because… obviously, the child would still be a product of love. Just not a physical one.”

  I walked over to the other chair next to him and sat, contemplating on his trick question. His earnest stare did little to hide away that boyish smirk on his face. An almost attractive combination, along with his hazel brown hair which seemed to have a mind of its own. My breath went in and out faster than I liked. If he wouldn’t suffer from such verbal diarrhea, one might almost call him cute.

  “I know what you are going to say, but it’s not the same thing. People over here have a choice,” I said.

  “Actually, they don’t,” he said, a suppressed smirk almost palpable in his voice. He was enjoying this, and I could either turn this into another quarrel or let him have this moment.

  “You’re right, they don’t,” I said. “Sometimes I wish you guys could experience all those things that can go on between a man and a woman. It would make talking about it a lot easier, don’t you think?”

  He intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms over his head, leaning over the backrest. A gap between his shirt and pants appeared, less than two inches high, yet enough to reveal a set of ripped abs. Heat overcame me, and I gasped for little huffs of breath.

  Max might not have been as broad-backed as our men, but he was tall and with an athletic built. Not the skull-crusher my brother was, but I bet he was fast and with the stamina of an Antelope.

  “There is something Ruth and I wanted to tell you,” he said and threw himself forward again. I watched how he tugged the hem of his shirt. To be precise, I stared how he fumbled it back down over his naked skin until his eyes caught mine. My heart skipped a beat. Did I just stare at his body? Shit, I did! Did he notice?

  “We are considering a different formula for the enhanced water,” he continued. “And we wanted to ask you for your take on it. It basically, um, reintroduces some of the sensations you mentioned earlier back into our perception.”

  “Seriously? It’s hard to believe the council would come up with such an idea after almost two decades.”

  “They didn’t want you to know.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest and tapped the end of the pencil on his pursed lips. Like a gentle stroke, he let his eyes wander once more. But this time across my entire body, slow and thorough, like a rite of passage into the circle of confidants. “It’s a secret. Ruth vouched for you and argued you won’t tell anyone that we filled you in.”

  I ignored the tone of distrust in his voice. People from the Districts thawing into actual human-beings? The thought alone made the hair on my arms rise.

  “I won’t tell anyone if that’s what you’re concerned about,” I said true and sure, figuring anyone means nobody except Rowan. A candle of curiosity lit up inside me. “I’d really like to see how the men and women react to it.”

  “So do I, but we’re having troubles getting a trial up and running. As a matter of fact, Ruth wanted to ask you if you could help us.”

  “Yeah, su…” I let my voice trail off, giving my brain three seconds to catch up. “Wait a minute, what exactly do you need me to do?”

  He flung his pencil onto his desk and turned his chair away from me. “Doesn’t matter anymore. We thought you could be the constant variable, but I realized you’re not suited for it.”

  Constant variable? The fact that I wasn’t good enough for it made me clench my fists around the sides of my chair. “I can be a constant variable!” Whatever that is…

  “Sure,” he said, the word drawn out into a clear mock. “Do you even know what a constant variable is?”

  Like a smartass, he let an undertone of superiority drip from his voice. My palms itched. I wanted to hit him on the back of the head, but this wasn’t back home. Cou
ncilwoman Kenya told me differences are being resolved with honest and clear communication. So I communicated as clearly as I could.

  “Listen jerk, just because you are a scientist doesn’t mean that you are any smarter than I am. Do you know what Braula Coeca is? No? I didn’t think so. That doesn’t make you stupid though, just not versed on this subject matter.”

  His eyes lit up, which had something foreboding. Perhaps he wanted to follow it up with thunder — but I wouldn’t let him. Not this time. I took a deep breath and mimicked his posture, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “Now how about you explain what a constant variable is, and I decide if that is something I can do or not.”

  Motionless as he was, I feared he might have melted into his chair. His lips parted but stalled before any sound escaped them. Then he licked them and let his hand dart for a water bottle on his desk. Thirsty as a flounder, he poured it down in big gulps.

  He rested the bottle on his thigh, and a lonely drop squeaked as his thumb smeared it across the smooth surface. “The constant variable would be a woman who has some sort of potential stimulus. Without it, we won’t be able to determine just how much the water affects me.”

  “Wait.” I held my palm up as if I wanted to rewind time and hear him repeat it. “Did you just say how you will react to the water?”

  His gaze dropped to his shoes like lead. “Uh-huh.”

  His answer, although nothing but a throaty noise, made my knees go weak. If Max tested that new formula, would he feel attracted to women? Would he feel attracted to me? My stomach fluttered, probably because of how much the thought disgusted me. Besides… I was more variable than constant — no way I could be both at the same time.

  “Just to be clear… you’re testing the water on yourself?”

  “Yep.”

  My pulse raced as if I had spotlights on me. Definitely disgust.

  The council arranging for an exchange was huge. But the council testing a different formula for their water… that was a triple-fudge whopper of a birthday cake with a cherry on top.