The more I observed the more validation I found for Winston’s story. I had always taken for granted that people looked different with white, brown, black or other shades of skin color. But the fact that Janari’s people spoke a different tongue, seemed nonsensical to me at first since their physical location was so close to ours. I soon came to realize that many men and women from all over the world had followed Charles and Alexander into this valley, creating a wild mix of language, culture and skin-color. The mere difference in distribution of backgrounds severely impacted how the new cultures of Traditionalists and Escapists eventually developed.
Another thing that caught my attention was the ironic change in social class. The men and women of the city had mostly been middle class citizens. They were not interested in change as they were content with their lives. For them, not much has changed except that a new social hierarchy had been created. The Aristocrats, after rising to the apex of their power in ’49, dropped into the gutters right thereafter. They were leaders, businessman and thinkers; All occupations that were of little use, when one had to start from scratch. The only viable explanation I found to answer why they were now living in small poorly constructed shags was that their standard of living dropped so rapidly that they had little knowledge on how to accommodate without the technology they had grown so dependent on.
Ironically enough, if it had not been for the greed of the lower classes, that used their technical skills and physical strength to create the Underground Empire, they could have been the new rulers of the world. For many years, the poor became the new rich and advanced, transmuting their faith, skills and desires into a massive scheme for power. But nature, with its uncontrollable superior power, kept man in check and made sure that he would never rise again.
I wanted to take Janari’s hand and walk into her village. Meet her parents. Talk to her relatives. Get to know her brothers. But I knew I could not. The moment any of them would have seen us together, I would have died in an instant, spiked by arrows and spears, or slashed to pieces by their giant axes. She on the other hand might have been banished, as aiding the enemy was treason. I could not risk it.
Clasping her small hand, I looked at her and whispered in simplified sentences, gesticulating to each word, “Not safe. We leave now. You tell me about your family in the future.”
A frown crossed her lips as she lowered her head.
I lifted her chin, “You have a nice family. And I want to meet them. I really do, but I doubt they will embrace a man of the Guard.”
She smiled slightly even though she did not understand all the things I had said. For a moment she was deep in thought. “You are different,” she said. “You have a kind heart, Adam.”
Chapter 20
A year had passed since the day she showed me her village. We were lying together in the colorful leaves of fall under the clear sky, watching the stars till late at night.
When I heard the faint fifth ring of the city bell, announcing midnight and the break of the new day, I sat up, getting ready to leave. She grabbed my arm and whispered into my ear, “Please don’t go yet.”
“I have to. Everybody is growing more suspicious about my nightly disappearances; Peter, the others, and even Terric. He noticed that I come to the wall on fewer and fewer occasions.”
“When is the hiding going to end?” she asked quietly, playing with my hair.
With a grave expression I stared straight into the dark woods. I loved Janari, but I loved Katrina as well. Love was such a simple word, and used as if it held a universal meaning, yet meant something completely different for the two of them.
“You know it is not that easy,” I said slightly bothered by the continual reappearance of the same topic.
She sat up and refrained from touching me. Like me, she stared off into the woods from the center of the clearing, and tried to contain an outburst. With closed eyes she breathed in and out, “Of course, I know it is not easy, Adam. But what happened to our vision to bring an end to this bloodshed and to reunite the human race?”
We had always talked about the future; a future in which we broke the barriers of our cultures. Only through us, or complete extermination of one side, could the ceaseless fighting end. But if things did not work out…, “I just cannot put you in such danger. They would kill you, or use you for the entertainment of the soldiers.”
“What are our lives worth if we don’t affect the lives of the many. Our little secret will vanish into oblivion the moment you finish service or die by one of my clansmen. I am ready to take this risk. We will write history together. We will bring light to the darkness and turn the night into the day. Light is near, Adam.”
Her optimism and idealism not just matched but even surpassed my own. What she said was true. It was the right, responsible and rational thing to do. But my feelings brought forth nothing but irrationality. “I don’t trust most of the guards,” I said briskly. Her body tensed as if she were ready to get up and leave. “But,” I added, “I want to meet your family. Do you think they will receive me?”
Her eyes shimmered, as if I had said what she wanted me to say for so long. “I do not know. But whatever happens I will put myself in between any harm that comes your way if things go wrong,” she said in a serious tone. While she tried to reason with me and make me feel better about my offer, the fact that she might be harmed even in this scenario made me uneasy.
The beauty about our friendship was how it had originated. Before learning to understand my voice, she had learned to understand my behaviors. She quickly caught on to my inner feelings which I tried to hide so well. “It will be alright, I promise,” she assured me and rested her head on my shoulder. “One day we will flee from this place and go to Africa,” she said, “like you described it. Away from everything, just you and me; maybe even take our families and friends.”
“One day,” I repeated, visualizing the old dream that had been appearing in my mind ever since I read Winston’s diary.
“And the first step to that is to bring our families together. Can we see my family tomorrow?” she asked.
I sighed, as the timing seemed unexpectedly early. Originally I had planned on putting it off as long as possible. At last I gave in to her, “But first,” I said, “I need to know more about them.”
The night grew darker as Janari told me her family history. The time seemed to freeze as the night covered every living creature with a mollifying coat that absorbed all sound and fury and left us in utter silence.
Her father, born in the forgotten ages, had been part of a long lasting noble lineage. Thanks to his name he had been among the first to receive immortality. The divine gift fell short of its claim many years later when his hair began to grey. It turned out that the first to receive treatments did not gain complete immortality, as the discovery had not been ripened. The reason no one noticed was simple, as it took years to prove long term aging. Despite this, her father was almost one and a half centuries old. And aside from his grey hair, he was still as strong and fierce a fighter as a wolf. If he continued to age at this rate, he could have easily outlived me.
A bit of the gift however seemed to be passed on to Janari. She was a few years older than me, yet looked no year older than eighteen, as she peaked in her youthfulness and beauty day after day.
Janari’s mother was of a much simpler breeding than her father. However she was the one, from whom Janari inherited her inert curiosity. From what she was told, her mother had been a journalist for the Escapists. She had met Janari’s father on a job as she was collecting news from the different states, tribes, and governing forms that had accumulated in the valley and beyond. She had visited an old Aristocrat settlement up north that had claimed a palace for itself. Her stay was of short time, yet long enough to fall in love with the then ageless man that would soon be the father of her child. As she became pregnant with Janari, she had to marry him or be cast out by her family. For an Aristocrat however, who had declared themselves gods, it was an
abomination to marry a mortal. It was thus that they had to leave their former life behind, never to be heard of again.
Soon, they joined a tribe of peaceful renegades of both Aristocrats and Escapists that had settled in the woods far off from the city. Through ignorance and mere mistake the Guards shed the first blood in a hunting accident, leading the renegades to join other tribes, creating a longwinded vendetta with the Traditionalists. Despite all this excitement, Janari was born safely, and her parents finally were able to get married.
A few years later when Janari was still young, her mother was pregnant again, with twins. The ill equipped tribe would not have been able to safely remove them from her womb. The shaman, who was the settlement’s doctor, offered her herbs that would bring forth the quick death of her children. Her husband would not agree to such a heinous act and urged her to return to the palace of his people to seek professional help.
It was through this tiding that they had moved back to the palace. But to their dismay they found nothing but vacated space, with no sign of any current inhabitant. Before they had a chance to return to their village, Janari’s mother grew sick. She knew that her twins’ birth would be imminent. Due to her sickness and the days of travel, she was too weak to bear them regularly, and needed a caesarian. With her own hands she cut her stomach open so that when she lay dead, her husband could ensure that the twins would live.
But the final hardships had not passed with her death. Through her many travels into the places beyond the valley, she had been exposed to radiation, leaving her newborns crippled and deformed. Nevertheless, Janari’s father accepted them and loved them, because they were his wife’s last wish.
“Your parents seem stronger than anyone I have ever met,” I said in awe.
“Their strength is fueled by their love,” she said. “You are strong too, Adam. Who is she? I know there is someone you are fighting for.”
I blushed, taken by surprise by her observation of my feelings for Katrina, “How did you know?”
“I see the longing look in your eyes as you stare off into the night, even though I am right next to you. You are loving and caring towards me, but I can sense how much she means to you. Tell me about her.” Janari was more than understanding; she was mature and wise unlike most of my peers. She was not offended, but merely wanted to learn more about me.
“Her name is Katrina,” I began…
With the first light rising in the distance, I woke up on the hard forest floor. She had managed to keep me there for the night, it appeared, as her head rested on my chest. Carefully I woke her up and rushed through the woods to the common-hall, just in time to arrive before Peter and the others.
“Ya’ve been gone all night mate,” Nigel said, sitting down with his tray at our table.
“I’ve been having trouble sleeping,” I said casually.
“He’s been an insomniac ever since he joined the Guard,” Peter explained. “If it isn’t the beasts that kill you, the lack of sleep sure will.”
I played along, “You are right. Jacob, is there any chance I can pick up wood today for my duty?”
“Trying to cut time and take a nap? That’s fine with me,” he said. “But tomorrow you will have to be on the cutting squad.”
The excuse to leave with Janari for her village came easier than expected. It took something off my mind as I had been troubled the whole morning, thinking of what lay ahead.
As I walked to the woods someone hissed, trying to get my attention. “Blacksmith, come here for a moment.” With contempt I recognized Yorick’s voice and turned around. Standing in the shade of the outer wall, he pulled me aside, “I have a little job for you—”
I cut him off, “Is this Master Yorick talking, or Yorick ‘the lamb’, as you are referred to by your men?”
He was baffled and surprised that I had the audacity to cut him off and question his authority. “Oh, it is nothing much. Look at it as a favor for a friend. If I am happy with your work, maybe we can start working together more regularly, and get over our old feud.”
“I am not interested, and I have to get to work,” I said dryly and turned to leave.
“Blacksmith,” he called after me. His face was as cold as ice, “You better watch your back.”
By his look alone I genuinely feared for my life. I should have taken his offer, at that moment unknowing and ignorant of what a powerful enemy Yorick made. Instead I fled, hoping to never run into him again. His snakelike eyes haunted me up until the moment I met Janari.
“Are you ready?” she asked expecting me to get cold feet.
“As ready as I could be,” I responded almost confidently.
“Then let’s go.” With clear determination she led the way. The path seemed more familiar than last time, yet as perilously cluttered with Guard camps as ever.
The settlement emerged behind the thickets, like a parallel world that had been hiding from everyone’s sight. Without a moment of caution we penetrated through the invisible barrier and stood in between a row of huts.
I awaited a score of arrows to pierce through me right there, but it took a moment for them to even notice me. Once an elderly woman looked towards us, my presence was quickly the focus of the settlement. From that moment on everything went unperceivably fast. Some cried out, some hushed away, and yet others flexed their muscles and pointed their weapons as to scare me away from their territory. A wild sea of sounds and movements consumed me, freezing my muscles to ice and my bones to stone. My head began to spin, and all I sensed was Janari’s warm hand pressing my wrist. For a moment I felt like I did on the day of my celebration.
From the waves of noise emerged Janari’s voice. She yelled something in her language. From the little I had learned I could judge that it was a disclaimer that I was a friend. As a result some calmed, and turned their hostility into curiosity. Others took much longer to be convinced.
At last her father, wearing a cloak made of a bear’s pelt, strut out of the crowd like a lion from his pack. Carefully he examined me from head to toe, with piercing eyes that went through me like an arrow. To him I was the monster. To him I was the savage to be weary of. To him I was the demon that haunted the valley.
His eyes reflected spite from the core of his heart that was much older than me or my parents. There were no words that could reason or appease this pain, and so he sought redemption. With a cry filled of revenge he drew a broad blade, shaped like a butcher’s knife. He turned towards the crowd and spoke in a slow thundering tone. They nodded with approval, and stomped on the ground to every syllable that left his lips. He spoke too expressively for me to understand what he said, but I could sense that it was not in my favor. Janari grew not only alarmed, but tense, and slowly began to shake.
It was obvious that she had imagined things differently. By now the crowd was chanting passionately, as if they were thirsty for my blood. Janari’s father spun around and laid the blade against my neck. His tone grew into a crescendo, saturating in power, motivation, and leadership.
All my training flashed before my eyes, in the vain attempt to find an exit to my peril. No scenario ended without bloodshed or the possibility of my own death.
When all ideas had passed me and faith had long been lost, Janari pushed the blade off my neck and stepped in front of me. With a commanding tone she spoke to her father whose momentum was suddenly dispelled. It was something powerful she said, something that seemed unperceivable to be associated with a monster; Love.
The people were perplexed by what appeared to be received as an obscenity. In a low voice her father hissed, “How dare you?”
“He is different,” she said loud enough for the others to hear it. “He wants to bring peace. He sees us for who we are and I see him for what he is. There are no monsters or demons in this valley; just regular men driven by vengeance and hate. We are all the same and you know that!”
Shouts seemed to challenge her words. Some sounded like insults that cut into her confidence like knifes.
At last the final remnants of rebellion died down.
Her father walked in semicircles, between me and the crowd. “Tell me,” he said, “why should I trust him?”
“Because I understand you,” I responded in their tongue.
A lot of the people were shocked to see a stranger know their language. For some, these few words had changed their entire perception of me. “I do not want to fight you, and I am not interested in your lands,” I continued, “if I were to offer peace, what would you ask of me?”
“You know where we live,” the chief bristled with anger, “and you know our language. If you are a spy you can seal our fates the moment I let you go. I should kill you here and now.”
“If I were a spy, I would have had guards follow me here. But I came alone. I gambled with my life to gain your trust,” I raised my voice. “I ask you again, if I were to offer peace, what would you ask of me?”
Her father’s look had changed from violent opposition to curious uncertainty. I could see that he did not trust me yet, but I could sense that an offer of peace intrigued him. “I do not ask for much, but for what I ask, I ask with conviction,” he began, “We will keep our village, and we want rights to the woods surrounding us. No, not just rights,” he said. “We want separation. We don’t want any of your men even close to our turf. Borders must be established. Additionally you will need to provide us with livestock and grain. Many years in the past, your men have slaughtered our livestock and burned our fields, forcing us to resort to stealing your rations and eating the corpses of your men. If you want our assaults to end, you must first provide us with an alternative. And that is what I ask for, no more and no less.”
“Then you shall have that,” I said with steady determination. “I will talk to my commander upon return. Until then avoid any conflict with the guards. I will do my best, you have my word.”