26
I feel the goosebumps rise on my arm as the chilled rush of the breeze skims across the remains of the lake just outside Martindale. Autumn is nearly upon us and I am hoping the clouds will roll in to treat us with its warm cascade of water.
I have my back to the woods, waiting for the snap of a twig or rustle of undergrowth to disturb me. The soft breeze swishes over me but doesn’t disguise the approaching clumsy footsteps. I grin to myself but don’t turn, allowing him to get closer as I keep my eyes steady on the wreck of plastic and glass filling the space that once brimmed with water.
A hand touches my shoulder and grunts a ‘raargh’ of happiness, I jolt my body in mock surprise, then turn around and grab his legs, pushing him to the ground and rolling on top, taking a moment to remember his blonde ruffled hair … except Opie’s hair isn’t blonde any longer. His skin is darker, his hair black, as I stare down at Imrin’s grinning features.
Suddenly my eyes are open and I am sitting up in an unfamiliar bed. It is light but I don’t remember falling asleep. I blink rapidly trying to clear the grey haze and, as I try to open my mouth, I realise my jaw is locked in place. I clench my teeth together and then slide them sideways across each other, before finally opening my mouth with a grimace of pain.
‘Silver.’
It is only at the sound of my name that I realise someone is holding my hand. My fingers clench tightly around theirs but my neck is too sore to turn.
‘Are you all right?’ a girl’s voice adds.
I groan involuntarily, before falling backwards onto the bed and hauling myself sideways.
‘Jela?’ I croak.
‘Yes, are you okay?’
‘Where am I?’
‘In the medical wing.’
It takes me a moment to process her words, as if she is speaking in a different language and my mind needs that short gap to translate it into something I can understand. I blink my eyes open further to see how bright the room is. Behind Jela, there are large rows of windows, with sunlight cascading through, making the white floor appear as if it is glowing. I try to focus on her but it is hard as the light is so dazzling. Her blonde hair is still in the plait I put in but is looking a little dirtier now and she is wearing the same dress she had on at the banquet. As I remember that, everything else tumbles back into my mind: the King, Pietra, noise, Rush, pain.
‘How long have I been here?’
Jela releases my hand momentarily and checks the grey-black face of her thinkwatch, before interlocking her fingers with mine again. There is clamminess between our skin but the sensation of human contact is so reassuring.
‘Around sixteen hours or so.’
‘You’ve been with me all night?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where did you sleep?’
‘Right here.’
I look at the chair she is sitting in but it doesn’t seem anything other than a plain piece of wood with a low back.
‘What happened?’
Jela’s fingers twitch slightly and I feel her rough nails gently scratch the back of my hand.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘There was so much noise, just this low hum of people talking to the person next to them that it felt really overwhelming. Pietra was sitting on the floor in front of the bench where we were. Then the big guy …’
‘… Rush.’
‘Yes. He sort of looked over towards us and said something but I couldn’t hear it. And then he just hit you and you went down. There was this gasp, as if everyone was making the same noise at the same time. The King made this sort of “oooh” sound. I was expecting you to get up, everyone was, but I think you hit your head on the floor.’
Jela stops to wipe her nose with her sleeve and it feels strange for someone I don’t really know to feel any sort of sympathy for me.
‘The King was clapping and whooping but Rush crouched over you and then called for help.’
‘Rush did?’
‘Yes. Ignacia was waving at the Kingsmen and then she came down the steps and told one of us to go with you.’
I try to lift myself up again, letting go of Jela’s hand as I do so to better support myself. Aside from the glare hurting my eyes, I don’t feel too bad. I start to look around the room, which is a lot smaller than I would have thought. There is space for half-a-dozen beds and little else, with a door at either end.
‘Which door did we come in through?’ I ask. Jela looks at me confused but then nods to the one behind her. ‘What’s through the other one?’
Jela shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. That’s where the nurse came from.’
‘What did they do to me?’
‘She injected you with something and wiped away the blood. That was it.’
It dawns on me that through a complete fluke, I have ended up in one of the few places Imrin and I hadn’t managed to map.
I want to check through the window but not necessarily with Jela still here. It is dangerous enough that we could be seen as being friendly and, although I want to get her out of here too, I’m not sure it’s best to let anyone other than Imrin know what we could be planning. The more people who know, the more leverage the Minister Prime or Ignacia could have if they ever discover what we are up to.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Jela asks.
I realise the way I am trying to take in the room could be unnerving, given the speed with which I am twisting from side to side.
‘I’m fine. Thank you for coming with me.’
Jela grips my hand again. ‘Can I tell you something about me?’
‘Of course.’
She puts her other hand on mine and I look into her weary but smiling eyes. ‘When I got on the train, I was with Pietra and the others but my family had only been living in the city for a couple of years.’
‘Really?’
I have never known whole families moving into and out of Martindale. I always knew people moved to the big cities after the Reckoning but didn’t realise it could be small groups, instead of just one person.
‘It wasn’t through choice,’ Jela replies. ‘We used to live in this village that had a stream running through it. There were ten or eleven houses still standing after everything. One of them was the place where my mum had lived her whole life.’
‘Why did you have to leave?’
‘One morning I was woken up by this hammering on the front door and then Dad was in my room saying I had to pack as much as I could because we were leaving. Kingsmen had come to the village and said we weren’t productive enough to be living there.’
‘How do you mean?’
Jela shrugs sadly. ‘I’m not sure. We would grow our own food and we kept animals. There wasn’t much, but between the people that lived there, we had a bit of everything. I suppose they meant that there wasn’t much left to hand over when the deliveries came around – but then we almost never took anything, so nobody thought it would be a problem.’
I don’t say it but the reasoning now seems obvious given everything we have learned. A small self-sufficient community that doesn’t rely on rations or handouts is perhaps as dangerous as anything because, if we were all like that, we would have no need for a King or government. It is no wonder that the Kingsmen eventually put a stop to it.
‘What happened to you all?’ I ask.
‘My parents and I were taken to the city and given this one-room flat to live in next door to all sorts of other people. We were all separated, so I have never seen the others from the village again.’
‘How many?’
‘There were four of us all the same age. We were all only children but grew up like brothers and sisters. When you were talking about Imp and Colt, it made me think of them.’
‘What were their names?’
Jela’s entire face changes, the light making her eyes twinkle, her smooth, slightly brown skin stretching tautly into a perfect smile.
‘Lola, Muse and Ayowen. There was this huge field full of corn at the back of our house. The day before the Kingsmen came, we had been playing hide and seek in between the stems. Lola lived next door to me and none of us could find her. After a while, it wasn’t a game any longer and the rest of us were racing through the field calling her name. Then I heard Ayowen shouting for us instead. He was in the back corner where Lola was curled up with this white foamy liquid coming out of her mouth. I didn’t know what to do and was ready to race home but Muse knew instantly. He heaved her up and was pumping her stomach, then pouring water in her mouth and forcing her to bring it back up. Ayowen and I just looked at each other, not knowing what was going on but then, as if nothing had happened, Lola coughed this black jelly-type stuff up and she was fine.’
I look at Jela, not understanding what happened and wondering why she has told me.
‘Lola had found this brown fruit growing in the hedge and taken a bite from it. When Muse pointed at the juice drops on the floor, we could see the leftover core. He called it a tan fruit and said he had eaten some when he was young. It looks like an apple but is squishy and brown. If you eat one, it doesn’t kill you but they paralyse you for a while. If there is no one around, you might end up in a position where you swallow your tongue and stop breathing. His dad had saved him and warned him about them. I don’t know about the rest of the Realm but they were rare around our village.’
I nod in recognition but I’m still not sure I get the point.
‘When I was with the King, I was never allowed to share his meals but he would sometimes throw things my way that he didn’t want. Anything green or that looked like a fruit or vegetable would come to me. Usually I would eat it because I was so hungry but this one time he threw a tan fruit towards me.’
I look into her eyes as Imrin’s words flash through my mind from when we were talking about the weekly deliveries: ‘It is a mixture of foods, most of it we use, some we don’t. I’m not even sure I know what it all is’.
She releases my hand and stands, not adding anything else. ‘I’m going to go back to the dorm if you are okay?’
‘I am.’
With a smile and a swish of her plaited ponytail, she is gone, her footsteps echoing until the door bangs shut behind her.
I run through Jela’s story in my mind again and then slowly haul myself out of the bed, expecting to shiver as my bare feet hit the stone floor. Instead I feel an unnatural warmth. I am slightly unsteady on my feet and hold onto the bed for support, but the moment passes quickly and I pad my way across to the window. Running the full length of the wall is a radiator like the one we have at home – except this one is boiling hot and scalds me with even the faintest of touches. The heat is uncomfortable, something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt in my life, and it is as I look along the radiator’s length that I notice an open window.
Something surges in my chest as I check behind me and then move quickly towards it, thrusting my face into the space and enjoying the cool, refreshing breeze on my skin again. I can smell grass and dew as I breathe and taste the air that reminds me of home.
Opening my eyes, I take in what is below me. Imrin and I believed the medical area was much bigger than it actually is because we knew the main hall was directly underneath it. Instead, it is perhaps a quarter of the size, the hall stretching out in front of me towards the castle wall. From the window is a drop of a couple of metres and then a run across the hall’s roof, a jump to the castle wall and then … a plummet of around eight or ten metres. It would be too much for anyone’s legs to take and the window is too small for me to fit through.
I return to the bed and sit with my legs over the edge, feeling slightly woozy from the walk and trying to focus on the darker corners of the room.
‘Too bright?’ A female voice comes from somewhere behind me.
I turn quickly, making my dizziness worse, as the silhouette of someone approaches from the door Jela said the nurse came from.
‘I suppose …’ I try to sound more ill than I am. In truth, aside from the slight feeling of disorientation, I don’t even have a headache.
I feel a warm hand on my head. ‘It’s only to be expected after the blow you took.’ Her voice sounds genuinely concerned.
‘It’s hot in here,’ I say.
‘Yeah.’ The nurse doesn’t sound too approving and mumbles something about the heating always being on. I don’t catch it all but I’m not sure it’s for my benefit anyway.
She looks around the empty room. ‘Has your friend gone?’
‘We’re not really friends,’ I say, remembering Hart’s instructions and thinking I should play it safe. ‘We’re just in the same dorm.’
The nurse nods knowingly and then digs into a pocket, taking out two white tablets and handing them to me. ‘Here, you take those. It will make you feel better.’
I am wary of swallowing anything without knowing what they are supposed to be, but take them with a smile and ask for water.
‘Of course, I’ll be right back.’
‘Can I come with you?’ I ask. ‘I want to try walking again.’
The nurse eyes me but then nods and dips her shoulder for me to steady myself on. Together we go to the room at the back. She presses her thinkwatch against a dark sensor, similar to the ones in the zoo, and the door fizzes upwards.
Inside is a smaller room with a single bed pushed up against the far wall and rows of shelves that have piles of small boxes stacked on them.
‘The sink’s there,’ the nurse says, pointing to a small cubby hole on the right.
I use my hands to drink the water, but drop the tablets down the plughole and then quickly wash my face.
The nurse is waiting in the doorway as I turn. ‘You’re going to have a bit of a black eye but you don’t seem too bad, given what happened.’
‘Thanks.’
She nods and leads me back to the bed but I tell her I would like to return to the dorm. She tells me I can stay longer if I want but I say I’m feeling a lot better after the medicine she gave me. With a shrug, she says she hopes she doesn’t see me soon, which is perhaps the nicest thing any of the adults have said to me since I arrived.
I step out of the main door and make a mental note of the nearby cameras and then deliberately go the wrong way before playing up my forgetfulness in front of a camera just in case anyone is watching, and then retreating back the correct way. As I quickly move past the area where the Minister Prime’s office is, I risk a quick glimpse towards the door that hides the zoo and wonder how my tortoise is doing.
As I turn back around, I see the shape of Hart standing in front of me.
I say his name, part in surprise.
‘Shh, in here.’
I glance both ways and then follow Hart into one of the side offices Imrin and I ignored on our first night-time visit. The back wall is decorated with rows of books and the green desk perfectly matches the carpet. As I look around, I feel Hart’s hand on my shoulder.
‘Silver, pay attention,’ he says urgently.
‘What?’
‘I … I thought you were dead. When he hit you, you just fell. Everyone heard your head crack.’
Instinctively, I reach up to the area around my cheek. ‘I don’t feel too bad.’
Hart nods and then sighs. ‘There’s something I should have told you when we first spoke …’