Strangers and Shadows (2 page)

“Took their final leave, eh?  That’s a mighty nice way of saying that they tried to end their own suffering, the coward’s way.”  Asher shook his head.  “I don’t understand it myself.”

“Well, it’s not my place to say, of course, but I’m of the opinion that we need to keep as positive a view as possible of the events happening these days.”  Bill brightened.  “After all, what would happen if the people lost all hope of this darkness lifting?  No, sir, I won’t be the one to blow out the final light of hope that these people have.  It’s bad enough that all the news I have to report is bad news.  The least I can do is try to lighten the terrible weight of it all with some
mighty nice way of saying it
.”

“I see your point…”  Asher grew more curious.  “Tell me though, how is it that you have enough light to print the paper?  As far as I know, the only people with lights these days are the members of the Queen’s court.”

“Well, it takes quite a bit longer, and I can’t print as much, but I increased the print size to where I could feel the shape of the letters on the cast.  Then I arrange them by feel.  Sometimes though, I get it wrong, so if you’ve noticed more misprints than normal, I beg your forgiveness.”  

“Nonsense, Bill, I’m grateful for the service you provide, and I know for a fact that the princess feels the same way.  And I’ll tell you what, I’ll see about getting you some light for you to work by.  Like you said, it’s important to keep people’s spirits up in times like these.”  

Bill thanked him and Asher left to report to the princess for the day’s business, walking past groups of people huddled around a shared lamp, reading the morning paper.

Asher was almost to the palace, though he wouldn’t have been able to tell, just from looking.  In fact, he could hardly see five feet in front of him, even with his torch light.  The morning mist combined with the darkness to swallow any light that was near it.

Looking around, he couldn’t help but notice how depressing the darkness was.

Ordinarily, the palace was a beautiful sight to behold.  The work of hundreds of craftswomen.  Queen Emille’s palace took seventeen years to build.  It always made Asher think of the stories of past kings and their grand palaces.  Solomon, Caesar, the czars of Russia...  Asher wondered what it must have been like when people were ruled by men.  Was it really so bad as the teachers say?

Asher was one of the few men alive today who was allowed to do something besides manual labor, military service, or breeding duty.  After The End War, the remaining survivors, mostly women, had decided it would be better to limit the male population and breed out male aggressiveness in order to prevent the mass genocide from ever occurring again.

According to the histories that Asher had read, Gretchen Richards, a British psychiatrist, was responsible for re-uniting the surviving human race and implementing the new breeding policies.

Her breeding program selected the healthiest male survivors and banished or killed the rest.  The whole thing seemed a bit cruel to Asher, but his teachers assured him that it was absolutely necessary to the survival of the human race, and who was he to judge, he hadn’t been there.

Asher remembered the fullness of his teacher’s lips and the curve of her hips as she explained the early days of the Program to him.

The Program required all of the remaining males to undergo a series of deadly games and tests that would determine who would be kept in the rebuilding society for reproduction.  The rules of the game were simple:  if you survived, you won, and were allowed to pass on your genetic makeup.

The men who won were then separated and sent to different breeding houses where they would live out the rest of their lives, never seeing what would become of the children they had with the handful of women that would visit them daily.

If a man refused to play the game he was cast out of the society and never allowed access to a female for the rest of his life.  Still, there were whispered rumors of male led tribes across the Atlantic where some of the outcasts had fled, taking with them female captives.  Asher, for one, didn’t believe it.  The land across the Atlantic had sustained the worst of the damage from The End War.  The teachers all said that the fallout would have rendered the remaining land unlivable for thousands of years.

Asher was so caught up in his memories of school that he let his lamp blow out.  Cursing his absent mindedness, he went up to the queen’s chambers in darkness, since he’d brought no matches with him.  Surely, the princess would have a lamp burning.

Asher stumbled only once before he reached the top of the stairs.  He looked toward the door of the queen’s room, where Avialle was staying in her mother’s absence, and thought that he should have been able to see the princess’s light by now.

Wondering if something had gone wrong, or maybe she was still sleeping,  Asher decided to approach as quietly as possible.  Before he could make it to the door, he heard the longest creak he’d ever heard in his life.  

He cursed himself for being so stupid.  How could he have forgotten the creak that the queen had her servants put in?

The queen didn’t like to be taken by surprise when her attendants came knocking on her door, and Asher had just discovered that the purposefully placed creak was quite effective. 

“Who’s there…?  Is anyone there?  My lights gone out and I can’t see a thing.”  It was the princess’s voice.

Asher paused for a moment, pondering how to proceed.  He pushed the door open slowly, and looked into the darkness of the room, trying to decide where the princess might be.  He heard the sound of her falling followed by an ear piercing scream.

Asher could hear her scramble frantically, as he found the princess’s matchbox and lit his lamp.

With the light, he could see Avialle’s panic stricken face staring at him from the floor, her legs draped over the fallen chair.

She was relieved that it was only Asher, but angry and embarrassed at looking foolish.

“Asher!” Ava yelled.  “You could have called out...” she paused, an evil grin coming over her face, “now, you will have to be punished.”

Ava stood up quickly and grabbed Asher by the hair on the back of his neck.  She pulled down and began to kiss up and down his neck and jawline.  “You’ve been a bad boy, haven’t you?”

Asher was about to reply when one of the princess’s chambermaids came running up the stairs with a torch.  Ava and Asher quickly separated like two kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“Your Highness, forgive the intrusion, but something has happened outside the walls of the city!”  The girl was out of breath from running, or maybe it was the excitement.

“Well... what is it?” Ava asked, annoyed at the interruption and even more upset at having almost been caught, although, there was something in the girl’s tone that sent shivers down her spine.

“We’re not sure, Your Highness.  It’s a light of some sort, a glowing light.  It pulses outside the city walls.  We thought it might be the queen returning, but it hasn’t moved.  One minute there was nothing but darkness out there, and then suddenly there it was.”

“Come, Asher, we’d better have a look,” Ava said.  The three left the palace and headed for the city wall.

Hope began to swell in Ava’s heart as they were walking.  Perhaps it was her mother, returning with the cure to this darkness.  They reached the top of the wall and walked through the crowd of onlookers that had gathered.

“There, Your Highness...” the commander of the Queen’s Guard said, pointing toward the glow. 

“Yes, I see...”  Ava said.  In fact, it was a little hard to miss the only source of light outside of the city walls.  “How far out do you think this
glow
is?” 

“We’ve estimated about two, maybe three miles, Princess,” the commander replied.

Ava looked at Asher, seemingly for a second opinion.

Asher nodded.  “That seems about right.”

“Very well then,” the Princess said.  “How long has it been there?”

“We first noticed it almost an hour ago.  I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks at first, but when others began to see it too, we sent for Your Highness.”

“My chambermaid reported that it hadn’t moved, is this still the case?” the Princess asked.

“We haven’t noticed any change in it’s position, no.  One moment it wasn’t there, and the next it was.”  

Ava thought the matter over.  She’d be the first to admit that her mind was scattered at the moment.  “I want you to keep a close watch on it.  I have some pressing matters that require my immediate attention.  If there is any sign of movement, or any change whatsoever, you are to send for me immediately.  Is that clear?”  The Princess didn’t wait for a reply before she turned and started back for the palace.  Asher and a few guards followed close behind, while the commander of the Queen’s Guard settled in for the watch.

Although distressed and excited by this new phenomenon, Ava was even more eager to return to the privacy of her chambers and finish what she had begun with Asher.  It had been two weeks since she and Asher had been together, with no end to the urgent matters that constantly required their time and energy.  Ava was looking forward to a few blissful moments of forgetfulness and release from the stresses of ruling the realm.  If her mother knew that she was abandoning her duty just to climb into bed with a man, she would—Ava didn’t want to think about what her mother might come up with for a punishment.  Instead she turned her thoughts to what she would do when they were alone.

The two of them had been lovers in secret for almost a year now.  He was the first man she had ever been with, and she was his first as well.  They had grown up knowing each other, as Asher would consistently accompany his father to the palace, so when Ava could take the mystery of sex no longer, it was only natural that she pick the closest, most convenient man to her to experiment with.  But truth be told, she found him quite appealing when the mood struck her.  They both knew that if the queen, or anyone else for that matter, ever found out about them, Asher would almost certainly be executed for violating the Program laws.

Under the law, coupling could only take place by order of the queen and her geneticists.  The human population had to be carefully kept in check in order to prevent any debilitating drain of resources. 

Humans closely resembled bees now.  The queen was head of state and society.  Every male was genetically screened at birth (what few males were allowed to be born at all) for what were considered desirable traits.  Those who possessed the traits were given positions of limited authority and were allowed to reproduce at such a time and with such a partner as the crown decided.  All other males were sterilized and made into “worker bees.”  They served little other purpose than to perform manual labor and serve as was required of them.  It was not a cruel existence, they were well cared for and looked after, just not equal.  They were viewed more like eternal children, and as children, they were given chores to do.

As Ava and Asher walked back to the palace, they discussed what should be done about the mysterious glow, but the conversation was more for the benefit of the guards walking with them.  

They reached the bottom of the stairs leading up to the queen’s chambers.  “Wait here, and do not disturb me unless it is a matter of life and death,”  Ava told the guards.  “Come Asher, I want to discuss today’s events further with you.”  Ava didn’t think that any of the guards or palace staff knew about her and Asher, and she wanted to keep it that way.

The pair walked up the stairs, barely able to restrain themselves from running.  They reached the doors, flung them open and then slammed them shut just as quickly.  The lamp was hastily set down on the night stand, almost falling off of it before Ava blew it out.  The two young lovers had their way with each other and then collapsed in a tangle of limbs, exhausted.

After a few restful moments, they began to discuss the problem at hand again, this time in earnest, without interference from the chemicals in their brains or the stirring in their loins.

“Well,
Royal Consort
, what do I do about this new mystery?”  Ava asked.

“If there was a change, the guards would have told you by now...”  Asher said, not wanting to overstep his bounds in suggesting what should be done.  Ava was the princess, after all, and lovers or not, Asher knew better than to challenge the social dynamics between them.  She was a ruling female, and he, just a male with desirable genes and a job to do.

“I suppose we shall have to ride out and inspect it for ourselves then.”  

Minutes later, for the second time that day, they found themselves at the city wall looking out at the mysterious light.

The princess decided to assemble a scouting party from the guards nearby.  She would lead it herself, much to the annoyance of the Queen’s Guard.  They would have traveled on horseback, but with the lack of light, it was just as fast to travel on foot.  Safer as well.

Despite the fact that they only had a few miles to cover, it took the better part of the day to close the distance.  And while the Glow never seemed to get any nearer, Ava began to wonder if it was decreasing in size to maintain the appearance of distance.  The guards were anxious about the whole affair, as if they were on a quest to walk up to a sleeping dragon.  It was hard to blame them with the darkness and the mist swallowing up any light outside of the range of the torches.  Shadows were cast every which way and it was impossible to see any lights in the city from their distance.