35
On my thirteenth birthday, Opie and I ventured further into the woods than we ever had before. We had always hung around the edges, making swords out of sticks and playing hide and seek behind the branches and bushes, but the excitement of being that one year older spurred us into going out to the gully to see what lay around the edges.
At first it was thrilling but it wasn’t long before I began to feel that sting of fear, a paranoid terror of being lost and not being able to find our way back. Opie laughed it off but I think he was more frightened than me. He lifted me onto his shoulders, allowing me to reach up and grab the lowest branch of a huge oak tree. I climbed, my fingers fumbling along the rough bark as the knife-like stumps scratched and scraped at my bare legs, my sturdy little arms clambering from one tree limb to the next. Eventually I was high enough to see over the tops of the smaller plants. In one direction I saw the crater that was once the lake; in the other was Martindale, peaceful and safe. I was so taken with the beauty of seeing it from the top of the tree that I forgot where I was. I tried to get a better view but in the fraction of a second it took my foot to slide across the dewy leaves, I lost my balance. Something snapped against the back of my head but the one thing I felt before Opie caught me was the incredible, unmatched freedom of falling.
As I drop with fragments of glass glistening around me, I close my eyes and listen to the night. The whistle of the breeze feels like the greatest release I can imagine as I hear the splintering of the glass and the cry of surprise from the Minister Prime. My side hurts so much that I’m not even sure if it is from where I was manhandled the previous night, the way I fell when I was fighting Imrin, or from the window itself. Everything has blended into one stabbing throb of pain.
And then I land.
Not with a bang or a crash, but instead it feels soft and feathery as the sheets from the medical bay beds cushion my fall and I bounce slightly before I feel someone pulling me to my feet. Imrin is out of breath and frantic as the other Offerings drop the sheets and descend on me.
At least four of them ask if I am okay but I ignore the questions.
‘Did everyone get out?’
‘Not everyone,’ Imrin replies. ‘There were more Kingsmen, not loads but enough.’
I feel hands on my back and look around to see Jela, Pietra and Faith, concern etched on their faces. Above us, there is another roar of rage. The Minister Prime is standing precariously in the space where the window used to be, staring through the hole I have created, bellowing vengeance.
‘Where’s Hart?’ I ask.
Imrin doesn’t answer, instead grabbing my hand as we start running again, scrambling over and around the wrecks of buildings until we reach the tree line that we spent so many hours staring at longingly. Leaning against a tree, his breath spiralling from his mouth in the cold night air, is Hart.
‘He needed a head start,’ Imrin tells me as we stop momentarily to check he is all right.
Everyone is cold, hungry and tired but somehow we keep moving through the trees, past the remains of villages and towns long gone. On and on we continue, not knowing if we are being followed, somehow fighting our aching limbs until the orange haze of sun slowly begins to rise over the horizon.
I have long since lost any feeling down my right-hand side but Hart is in a worse state than any of us. His chin and chest are speckled with blood from a cough which constantly returns in fits and starts. Imrin is exhausted from helping Hart, and Faith is perhaps the only one who looks as if she could continue for much longer.
I have lost track of how long we have been moving as we cross the remains of what was once a wide six-lane road, jumping across the cracked and crumbling tarmac, until we end up sliding down a bank on the far side. In front of us are the remains of another village – bricks, tiles and endless piles of masonry as far as we can see. The low sun provides no warmth and the moment we stop moving, my teeth begin to chatter. Imrin dashes forward and peers through the collapsed door of the first property, before checking another half-dozen. He waves us over, directing us into the largest of the collapsed houses. Under our feet are broken slabs of concrete and ripped-up patches of carpet. Because of the way the roof has only half-fallen, it provides an almost cave-like environment.
Imrin pushes me into the space first and I count the rest of us in. As well as myself, Imrin, Faith, Jela, Pietra and Hart, there are another four boys and two girls. Of our thirty Offerings, there are just eleven of us – plus Hart.
We are all covered to varying degrees with mud, blood, dust, dirt and grime but there is a sense of achievement and relief. Imrin picks up a broken door and shoves it into the space we climbed through. If someone is going to check every building, we’ll be found but from the outside there’s no obvious sign of anyone being here.
We huddle together for warmth, making sure we all know each other’s names and where we come from. Somehow, it has taken me until now to notice that Bryony got away too. I wonder if she will ever get on with Pietra but, for now, it feels comforting to hear everyone’s voices, to know people from all four Realms have worked together to get this far. All I want to do is rest but Pietra stands and lifts her top before unwrapping my mother’s purple dress from around her waist and handing it to me. I smell the material and allow it to flow through my fingers, trying to picture Martindale before the questions start.
In one way or another, we have all been responsible for what has happened, although it is only me that knows everything. I ache all over but it is only fair I answer them, given the trust they have put in me.
I tell them how Imrin and I plotted extravagantly in the tunnel outside the dormitories and how our wild ideas eventually became a cohesive plan. Hart helped me into the Minister Prime’s office where I stole the list of every Offering along with the frequency codes which allowed me to bypass the block on communications. This meant that I could send a message using my thinkwatch to the relatives of all the Offerings still alive in the castle, telling them to get to safety. One of the boys, Frank, questions this, remembering that my own thinkwatch was cut off – except that I had already switched mine with brave Pietra. No one noticed the orange shade on the face of mine because I levered the front away and pressed specks of dust onto it, making it as dim as possible, before putting it back together. Her black thinkwatch was cut away from my wrist before anyone noticed I wasn’t the Elite it was showing me to be. She was the first girl in on the plan; the person who finally got all of the females talking to each other. Without that, we would never have been able to work together.
I tell everyone about the wonder of the zoo hidden within the castle and how Pietra took the cue, using my thinkwatch and the frequencies I found to remotely open the cages – and how she switched off the lights to gain us extra seconds.
I explain how Jela told me about the tan fruit. Faith and Imrin didn’t even know what they were at first but put their own lives on the line by covering for each other as they squished the fruit juice from one into a bottle of wine destined for the royal box.
Frank tells me how Imrin got him to rig the weapons, so they were hollow with the metal spikes blunted. They would still have done some serious damage but Imrin and I were never trying to hurt each other. They had also rigged swords to break and canes to snap, just in case different weapons were brought up.
Someone asks how I knew I would have to fight Imrin but I didn’t. It could have been Hart, or anyone. If I hadn’t have got myself into the dungeon, Hart could have been forgotten about, but it wasn’t a huge gamble to think that having the pair of us there would make the Minister Prime and King want to humiliate us. Imrin and I had a routine worked out to cause as little damage as possible but even if it had been someone not in on the plan, the weapons couldn’t have caused a great deal of harm. They ask how I knew I wouldn’t simply be killed by the King, but the truth is I didn’t. It was always going to be a risk and as soon as I had sent the messages, hoping Colt and my mother would understand and get themselves to safety, I was willing to do whatever.
As Imrin cradles me and my eyes begin to close themselves, I tell them about my camera trick and how I reversed it using the codes from the Minister Prime’s thinkpad. Instead of giving me ninety seconds to get past them, the cameras started broadcasting across the nation.
One of the boys who worked in textiles – the person who got the borodron in the first place – helped to smuggle out the rope that enabled everyone to get down the wall after escaping through the hospital window. They grabbed sheets from the beds before rushing around to catch me following my diversion. Imrin, who was responsible for so much of the message-passing while I was locked in the dungeon, assures me they didn’t harm the nurse.
But the whole plan could have been ruined if it wasn’t for Rush’s sacrifice. I hung around long enough to make the Minister Prime follow me instead of the other Offerings but Rush was the person who gave us those vital few seconds that allowed us to escape. So, lastly, I tell the others what he did.
As the sun continues to rise, peeping through the gaps in the bricks, none of us knows if people witnessing the brutality inflicted upon the nation’s Offerings will change anything.
I rest my head on Imrin’s chest and can feel the reassuring presence of Jela and Pietra nearby. I have no idea where our next meal will come from, no idea where my mother, Colt, Opie, Imp or any of the others’ loved ones might be. I don’t know if the Minister Prime is after us, or if the King has recovered.
As Pietra presses my thinkwatch back into my hand along with a screwdriver, I wedge the front off and start to wipe away the dust, exposing the gentle orange colour again. I can barely croak an apology for what happened to hers. What I do have is the map taken from the Home Affairs Minister’s machine with all the rebel strongholds listed. As soon as we are rested, we will start to plot and plan.
Tonight, the fightback begins – but this morning, as I hear the gentle drumming of rain bouncing from the rubble, we let our battered, bruised and brave bodies sleep.