Shards and Ashes

  The gates closed as soon as the cart was brought back in. I left then, mumbling apologies to Priscilla as she told me again how brave, how terribly brave, I’d been. Before I could escape, her father clamped a hand on my shoulder and said I must come to dinner, soon, that the fortress needed more young women like me.

  If only he knew.

  I got away, then raced to the smithy. Braeden’s “father” wasn’t there. He hadn’t gone to the ceremony, more out of shame than because he couldn’t bear to watch his boy branded and cast out. I made my way through the stables, past the horses that were the fortress’s most valuable commodity. That’s what Mr. Smith had used to buy Braeden—a horse. The tribe wanted it because horses were the only way to cross the barren lands one step ahead of the predators, human and otherwise. As Braeden said, though, he doubted their foresight had lasted past the first harsh winter, when they’d have looked at five hundred pounds of meat and decided having a horse really wasn’t that important after all.

  When I ducked out the stable’s back door, the smell hit me, like it always did. The dung heap. Almost as valuable as the horses themselves—or it would be, once it rotted into fertilizer for the fortress garden’s near-barren soil. Given the stench, this was one treasure everyone steered clear of. It was Braeden’s domain, one he never argued about, because that dung heap kept everyone from discovering his cubby.

  The “wall” was actually two layers with empty space between. In other parts, the space was used for storage. Here, because of the dung heap, it was left empty. Years ago Braeden had cut through a board behind the heap and made a narrow door. I had to twist out a nail to get the board free. Then I swung it aside and squeezed in.

  There used to be straw here, covering the ground and masking some of the smell, but a drought two years ago meant Braeden couldn’t afford to steal enough from the barn to replace it, so I’d brought rags instead. As for the smell, you got used to it.

  On the other wall Braeden had carved out a peephole. He’d covered it with a nailed piece of old leather, in case light from inside the fortress revealed the hole at night. I pulled the leather off and peered through. Braeden was a distant dot on the horizon now. It was still daylight, and the hybrids rarely came out then, but I knew they were there, hiding in the outcroppings of rock or the rare stand of scrubby bush. Braeden knew too, and steered clear of all obstacles.

  “I know how to survive out there, Rayne,” he said when he came up with the plan.

  “You were ten.”

  “But I survived. And I’ve been out with the voyagers. I’ll be fine.” He’d paused then, peering at me through the dim light in the cubby. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “You’ve taught me well.”

  “I hope so,” he’d whispered, and kissed me, a long, hungry kiss as we stretched out on the rags and told ourselves everything would be all right.

  I stared out at his distant figure.

  “Everything will be all right,” I whispered. But I didn’t quite believe it. I don’t think either of us did.

  I fell asleep in the cubby that night. I knew I shouldn’t—it was risky. But I had to trust that everyone in the whores’ dormitory would think I was just too upset to come back. Why did I stay? I don’t know. I guess it made me feel like, if things went wrong, and Braeden came back, I’d know and I could save him from the guard’s bullets. I couldn’t, of course. If he returned, even pursued by a pack of hybrids, he’d be shot.

  When I woke to the sound of voices, I bolted up so fast I hit the wall and froze. Then I heard another whisper—a male voice, from outside—and I scrambled over to the peephole. I couldn’t see anything. It was night and pitch-black. Then, slowly, I made out figures moving along the wall. More than one. Not Braeden. I started to exhale, then stopped.

  There were figures. Outside the wall. That was not a cause for relief.

  I crept toward the door, to race out and warn the guards that we were under attack. Then I heard a child’s voice.

  “Are we going to live in there, Momma?”

  “Shh!”

  “But—”

  A man’s voice. “We will . . . if you can be quiet, child. Just for a while longer.” A pause as they continued creeping along the wall, then he said, “Do you remember what we told you, child? What you need to say? It is very important.”

  “Yes,” the girl lisped. “I am to say that I am hungry and cold, that I do not eat very much, but I am a good worker, like my mother and my father. Then I am to cry. If I do not, you will pinch me.”

  “Only to make you cry, child. It is very important that you cry. They will not listen otherwise.”

  I cursed under my breath. Outsiders, coming to try to persuade the Six to let them into the fortress. It happened nearly every moon cycle. They came and they begged and they pleaded, and their cries fell on deaf ears.

  It had been a generation since our fortress accepted refu-gees. Yet the desperate still came, only to be refused and sometimes . . .

  I shook off the thought and reached for the cubby door. It was not my business. It could not be my business.

  And yet . . .

  Any other time, even the child’s voice wouldn’t have moved me. You learn not to be swayed by useless emotions like mercy and pity. But tonight, listening to the child, I thought of Braeden, alone out there, and I thought of the branding, and I thought of what would happen if these Outsiders approached the gate and refused to leave.

  I returned to the peephole and pulled back the leather.

  “You there!” I whispered.

  It took a moment for me to get their attention, but when I did, they came over and gaped around, as if the very wall had spoken.

  “You need to leave,” I whispered. “Now.”

  “What?” the girl said. “We have walked—”

  The woman reached out, scowling, and pulled her daughter closer. “Ignore her, child. It is only a fortress girl, not wanting to dirty her pretty town with the likes of us.”

  The man stepped forward. “There is no need to fear us, girl. We are hard workers, and your town needs hard workers, so you do not need to dirty and callous your pretty hands.”

  I looked at my already dirty and calloused hands and bit back a bitter laugh. What did they imagine when they pictured life in the fortress?

  “I don’t fear you,” I said. “I’m trying to warn you. Whoever told you this town takes refugees has lied. It hasn’t taken one in my lifetime, and it does not take kindly to those who ask.”

  The girl whimpered. Her mother pulled her closer, scowl deepening.

  “It is you who lies, girl. We know what you fear. That we will take some of your precious milk and your honey and your fresh water. You want it all for yourself.”

  Milk? They’d killed the cows decades ago, when they realized the milk was no longer worth the cost of supporting them. We had goats now, but their milk was reserved for children and, on special occasions, made into cheese. As for honey, the bees had started dying almost from the start, and the few that remained were coddled like princesses, because if they perished, the crops would no longer be pollinated. We would never risk disturbing them by removing honey from their hives.

  Water was another matter. We did have it. Every fortress was built around a spring, encompassing just enough land to grow crops and keep livestock and support the community forever. A noble dream. After generations, though, the water didn’t flow as freely as it once did. And the land? There must have been no farmers among those early settlers, or they would have warned that you could not keep using the same land year after year and expect bountiful crops.

  “We have nothing to spare,” I said. “We have too many to support as it is.”

  We’re dying. Don’t you get it? We’re all dying. Out there. In here. It makes no difference.

  I didn’t say that—I didn’t want to scare the little girl—but she started to cry anyway.

  “They won’t take us, Momma. You promised they would—”
br />   “They will,” the woman said. “Do not listen to that foolish girl. She is greedy and wants it all to herself. Come. We will speak to the guard.”

  “If you try, then you are the fool,” I whispered, my voice harsh, anger rising. “I only hope you are not fool enough to persist when the guard tells you to begone, or you will see your daughter’s blood stain the—”

  “Enough!” the man roared, and he leaped forward, challenging the very wall itself. Behind him, the little one began to sob. “You are a wicked girl, and you had best hope I do not find you when I am in there, or I shall teach you a lesson.”

  “Come,” his wife whispered. “While the child cries. It will soften their hearts.”

  Nothing will soften their hearts, I wanted to rage. You don’t get it. You really don’t get it. We have nothing to share. We are dying. Every third moon, the Six meet to assess the food supply and discuss new ways to decrease the population. They don’t just cast out the supernaturals anymore. The smallest crime is weighed against your contribution to the community, and if the balance is not in your favor, you are exiled.

  Nothing I could say would stop them. They were determined to make a better life for their child, which only made me all the more angry, because it made me feel pity. That love of parent for child was nothing I’d ever known. My mother had cared for me, in her way, but thought more of what I could do for her, the credits I could bring if my looks blossomed while hers faded.

  When she’d died three years ago, she’d been pregnant. For that, she was executed. Those in the fortress were allowed only one child, and in trying to secretly have a second, she’d committed high treason. She’d begged for mercy, pleaded and wept that she had been blinded by maternal instinct, which would have been much more touching if I hadn’t known the truth—she’d promised the child to the doctor for an outrageous sum. His wife was barren, and the new population rules did not allow adoption. They’d conspired to pretend the doctor’s wife was pregnant, while hiding my mother’s condition. It failed. She died. A community that would kill one of its own for the crime of attempting to bear a second child was not about to admit three strangers.

  I stayed where I was and strained to listen. They hadn’t even reached the gate before a patrolling guard tramped over, platform boards shuddering.

  “Who goes there?” the guard called.

  I could hear the parents prompting the child to speak, but she was too distraught, crying loudly now.

  “I asked who goes there!”

  “We . . . we are refugees,” the woman said. “Our tribe was raided by the Branded. We are the only survivors. We throw ourselves on your mercy and—”

  The child cut in, finding her voice. “I am hungry and cold, sir. I do not eat very much, but I am a good worker, like my mother and my father.” She snuffled loudly.

  “There is no room for refugees here,” the guard said. “Begone.”

  “Where?” the woman said. “There is no place for us to go.”

  “Find a place. Now leave.”

  “We’ll leave,” the woman said. “Just take our child. She’s strong and she’s healthy and she’ll be no bother at all. She’ll prove her worth. Just take—”

  “We have more than enough children of our own. We need no extra mouths to feed. Now, begone!”

  He cocked his gun, the metal clank ringing out in the silence. The woman started to wail as her husband begged the guard to take their daughter. Another guard joined the first and ordered them to leave.

  “Yes, all right,” the man said. “We are going, but we will leave the child.”

  “You will not—”

  “Stay there, child,” he said. “Just stay there.” To his wife: “Come. We will leave. They will take her.”

  “No, we will not,” the guard said, his voice growing louder as the parents’ footsteps trampled over the hard earth. “Come back and get the child or you are leaving her for the hybrids.”

  The girl wailed. I heard her try to run, but her father caught her and forced her back, whispering, loud enough for the guards to hear, “You will be fine. No one would be so cruel.” His voice rose another octave. “No one would be so cruel.”

  His footsteps retreated.

  “Come back for the girl!” the guard shouted.

  “You would not—”

  “If I open this gate to your child, my own life is forfeit. If you do not take her, there is only one way for me to show mercy: kill her before the hybrids do.”

  “You would not—”

  “I would! Now get back here and take your child and begone before—”

  “You will not. I know you will not.”

  “I must! Are you a fool? A monster who would sacrifice his own child?”

  The guard continued to rant, his voice growing louder, his partner joining in, entreating the parents to come back, do not do this, come back. Inside the fortress, people began to stir, doors opening, then closing quickly as they realized what was happening. Stopping up their ears because they knew what was coming. What had to come.

  A shot.

  A single shot, barely audible over the guard’s voice, choked with rage and grief as he cursed the parents to deaths in a thousand hells. The father shrieked and raged, and his wife wailed, and they raced back to their dead child, and the guards told them no, they must go, leave her, she was gone, and the scent of the blood . . .

  The parents didn’t listen. I could hear them still sobbing and cursing as they carried their child’s body into the wasteland.

  Then, reverberating through the night air, a growl. Joined by a second. I opened the peephole to see eyes reflecting in the darkness.

  “Drop the child!” the one guard shouted, his voice raw. “Drop her and run!”

  The guard continued to shout as his partner tried to quiet him, to tell him it did no good. The growls continued, seeming to come from every direction. And then, as if answering some unknown signal, feet and paws thundered across the baked earth, coming from the left, from the right, too many to count.

  The woman screamed. She didn’t scream for long.

  Growls. Snarls. Roars. The wet sound of ripping flesh.

  I stumbled from the peephole, fumbled open the door, and raced back to my quarters.

  For two nights, I scarcely slept, racked by nightmares of the child at the gate, the creatures beyond, those eyes, those snarls, that horrible ripping sound. I thought of that, and I thought of Braeden. Out there. Alone.

  “It’s the smell of blood that draws them out, Rayne,” he’d said.

  “But the branding. There will be blood—”

  “The soot does more than mark the brand. It covers the blood. As long as I take shelter at night, the only hybrids who will attack are the ones who are starving. Easily fended off with a blade.”

  He was right. The hybrids hadn’t attacked until the child was killed. They must have heard and smelled the three refugees, but they were still human enough to have learned lessons about attacking healthy targets.

  At least ones who were in groups.

  Braeden was alone.

  He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine.

  And if he wasn’t? This fate had been chasing him from the day he began his first transformation. He couldn’t have hidden that forever. Either way, he would have been cast out, and all we could do was take control of the situation. Make plans.

  Plans.

  The morning after Braeden was cast out, Priscilla had come to the livestock barns, where I was tending to the chickens. Except for civics class, most children stopped school as soon as they were old enough to work. My true “job” might be six months away, but that didn’t mean I could laze around until then. I had chores that paid for my room and board, and I worked extra tasks for credits that could be bartered for everything from shoes to rations. These days, for most people, credits went to rations, which only drove the price higher, until it was a rare night you went to bed with a full stomach.

  Priscilla had
asked me to lunch in the dining hall of the Six, and I’d come away sated for the first time in memory. There’d been extra tasks I’d planned to do that afternoon, but she had wanted to spend the time with me, and I knew that was more valuable than any paper token in my pocket.

  In another life, would Priscilla and I have become friends? Probably not. She was sweet and kind, but too timid by far. As hard as I struggled to remind myself that she had not chosen her place in the world, I couldn’t help but feel guilty niggles of contempt when she twittered about the refugees at the gate, telling me they had escaped into the night, as her father told her. There was no reason to correct her. It would only turn her against me.

  For the next three days, I accepted all her invitations, both to meals and quiet times together. Did she see me as a friend? Perhaps. But I think, in truth, I was more of a pet. An exotic pet in a world where children made cages for mice because anything larger was a source of food, not companionship.

  On the third evening, when I was supposed to meet her in the square to watch a rare dramatic performance, I did not show up. She found me in tears behind my quarters. Hearing her, I leaped up and wiped my cheeks.

  “Wh-who’s there?” I squinted into the twilight. “Oh, Priscilla. What are you doing—?” My eyes widened, mouth dropping open. “Oh! I was supposed to—” I looked up at the stars. “The performance. I missed it.” I hurried over to her, tripping as I did. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Another wipe of my eyes as I cleared my throat. “Nothing. I was just”—I pointed up—“admiring the night sky.”

  “You’ve been crying.”

  I denied it. She pushed. I continued to deny. This went on for a few minutes before I blurted, “I heard a rumor.”

  Thus far in our relationship, while Priscilla was the Second’s daughter, she’d treated me as an equal, more recently as someone she looked up to. I was a year older. I was more mature. I was certainly more worldly. And then, of course, there was the matter of my recent estimable “bravery.” When I said this, though, she pulled herself up tall and smiled, shaking her head as a mother might with her child.