Hadjia's whole body trembled. She couldn't think. Couldn't move. My family, she thought. I've killed my family.
Her legs gave out beneath her. She dropped to the ground with a thud. Her stomach emptied itself on the ground, spilling until there was no more. She heaved, her body convulsing. The world spun around her, black as night, creeping in from the sides of her vision like a ghostly wraith.
Anzai's voice came, as if from a distance….
"Hadjia didn't pass. You killed the final one, Kaneko."
"Shut up! Hadjia passed her test. If you want to survive the school, you won't say anything about it. You better not! I have the power to destroy you."
In the ensuing silence, Hadjia longed to fall into blackness and never return. To forget the horrible things staining her soul.
"Someone is coming," Kaneko hissed.
"Villagers."
"Yes. We have to get out of here. Right now."
"What about Hadjia?"
"She'll be fine once we get her moving, trust me. She's one of the strongest students in the school. Help me carry her. They sound like they're almost to the door."
Something jerked Hadjia to her feet. The waiting darkness covered her like a blanket, grabbing her from reality, and pulling her someplace where she could forget…everything.
Hadjia woke slowly.
Something soft was stroking her hair, tucking it behind her ear.
A quiet voice murmured the same thing over and over to her. A chant, one that she'd heard the villagers chanting to their babies once.
Was that her own mother calling her name? The soft voice. The gentle lilt. Her mother . . .
"Hadjia?"
Her eyes slowly fluttered open to see Kaneko. She was on the edge of Hadjia’s bed, a slight smile on her face.
"You're awake."
For a moment, Hadjia blinked, lost. Why was Kaneko there? Why did she smell the sharp acidic scent of vomit? And why –
Suddenly she remembered. Everything.
Family.
Sister.
Dead. All dead.
Kaneko put a cool hand on her face, one that instantly quelled her panic.
"Yes, yes. It was a long night for you. But all is well. You have completed the requirements, and will now go into your ceremony soon. Within an hour, you'll have a kunjar blade and be part of The Mother's most loyal group. Are you not pleased?"
The tension in Hadjia's body doubled, then tripled, until she couldn't look into Kaneko's face any longer.
Kaneko had killed that little girl. And she didn't have to: During Renji’s test, they had let the little girl go.
Like a coiled cat, Hadjia sprung. She pounced on Kaneko, shoving her off the bed and sending them both rolling across the floor.
"I don't want the knife! The ceremony. Mother Sigunta. I hate it all!" Hadjia wailed as she rolled over and over again.
Kaneko didn't make a noise: They all had been trained to be silent when something took them by surprise. But she perpetuated their rolling motion until Hadjia lay on the floor beneath her, pinned to the floor by Kaneko's hand's.
"Hadjia, calm down," she instructed quietly.
"No!"
"You must."
The firmness of her tone brought Hadjia from giving in to any more of her unrestrained anger. She panted, weakening, and stared into Kaneko's dark, comforting eyes. "If we're really sisters, the way you've always claimed, then you'll go away with me."
"Hadjia, take a breath. There's no reason to jump into doing something crazy before you find out all the information. Let’s discuss this. "
But Hadjia had stopped listening. Again the thoughts in her head whirled around and around, one after the other, dragging her deeper and deeper into a chasm from which she feared she'd never escape.
A vision of her blood sister gurgling as she bled to death replayed itself over and over in her mind.
Hadjia clenched her hands into tight fists. "I will not stay, Kaneko."
"You must."
"I won't."
Hadjia folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head back in defiance, daring Kaneko to counter her.
Kaneko sucked in a sharp breath through her nose, but her face remained expressionless. "I understand."
"You don't." Hadjia looked down at her hands, certain she could see blood slipping through her fingers and staining the skin it touched a hot crimson. Her family. That’s who they were. She knew it to be the truth; she was as certain of this as knowing the sun, the moon, and the stars appeared in the sky every day and night.
Mother Sigunta was the exact monster that Hadjia hadn't dared believe she would be. Hadn't wanted to believe. And now her family lay dead.
Hadjia's throat thickened. "I killed them, Kaneko. With my own hands."
Kaneko reached out and touched Hadjia's shoulder. "I know. I was there. I've been through it as well. I had to kill my family as well, Hadjia."
Hadjia shoved her arm off and stepped back.
"I'm going to leave the school. Tonight. I must. There's no way I can stay here another moment."
"Hadjia – "
"I won't stay!"
The finality in her words rang through the room like the chime of a bell.
Kaneko hesitated, starting deep into Hadjia's eyes, then nodded once. "Very well. I see that you can't be convinced." She hesitated. "Perhaps you should go."
For a long moment, Hadjia didn't dare breathe. "What?"
"If you don't want to stay, why stay?"
"You believe me? That I’m going to do it?"
Kaneko's expression softened. "Of course. We're friends. No, we're sisters. We always have been. Thanks to Mother Sigunta, we're all each other has, aren't we? I've always promised that I would stick by you, and I'll keep that promise."
"Yes."
"Then we'll go. Tonight. Together. We'll escape from the school and plan a new life."
Hadjia hesitated. Kaneko cared about Mother Sigunta as much as she had herself. Would it be so easy for Kaneko to let the world of the Red Moon School go? It had been Kaneko who convinced Hadjia to trust The Mother again when she felt so uncertain. Yet now the truth was as apparent as the blood that had covered Hadjia’s young hands: Mother Sigunta had been a murderer all along.
Now Hadjia was a murderer as well.
The fear that raged in Hadjia's chest began to settle. She exhaled a sigh of relief. She had a friend. Someone who believed her, and in her.
"Thank you, Kaneko."
Kaneko smiled with the corners of her lips. "Of course, Hadjia. We are here for each other. But I cannot just leave; The Mother watches me too closely. I need to prepare my room so she doesn't notice it's bare if she looks in." Kaneko nodded at Hadjia's bed behind them. "You should do the same. Pack lightly – only a few clothes, and your knife. Make it so you can strap it to your back: We'll be traveling and killing our food as well go."
Hadjia stared at Kaneko in surprise. "You know where we'll go?"
They knew so little of life outside the school and the woods surrounding swamp. Except for practicing their spying on a few villages here and there, most of the students had never left the school. But they couldn't go back to the villages—Mother Sigunta would look there first. Likely, she had spies who lived there anyway.
Kaneko hesitated. "I have an idea. If it doesn't work out, we'll do something else." She backed up to the door, her eyes locked with Hadjia's. "We can do this together. It won't be easy, but perhaps it will be good to be free."
"Together,” Hadjia said.
The door slid shut behind Kaneko, leaving Hadjia alone with only her thoughts for company. She cast her gaze around the room. The floor was bare, and even the corners of the room were clean: Mother Sigunta never tolerated cobwebs or a speck of dirt.
Nothing here had ever been warm. No dolls. No dinner where they discussed the day as a family. They never even talked with any neighbors, the way her real family might have had. Just ongoing, ruthless, relentless work, day after day after day.