“It sounds uncomfortable and…distracting.”
“I’d say so.” He purses his lips and thinks about it. “I think Shy sees colors the rest of us don’t, or she sees waves of light or the energy that holds this world together. She says she sees patterns, ghosts of what’s past. I don’t really know what she sees, ‘cause I sure don’t, and she doesn’t talk much except in old stories.” He rolls onto his side, head propped up on an elbow. “See how picky Prince is?”
Across the fire from us, Prince nibbles on bread and sniffs at a piece of meat. His stick-thin legs hang open at strange angles, his crutches on the stone beside him. “He smells the difference between things. The air between people and animals, sick and hale, poisonous, rancid, and pure as rain. He says most of the world reeks bad enough to make him heave.”
“And Glory?” I ask.
“Now Glory’s hard to say, ‘cause he don’t talk besides ‘guess so.’ But Mag says he hears music, patterns and rhythms, like the world is singing about its life in his ears. Maybe crossed up with color too, so the songs have colors dancing across his eyes. Hard to say.”
“Most of the time I see him, he smiles,” I say, supposing I might too if life revealed itself as a song. Surrounded by pain and death, it’s hard for me to view the world as anything but broken. Through the tongues of fire lapping at the cold sky, I watch Glory smile as he and a clutch of grubby children pat a furry dog. Mag peers at me over his shoulder, listening? “And Mag’s magic?”
“A few of the Touched can change the waves and energy,” he whispers. “Mercy speeds up and slows down the energy of things, or makes them hotter or colder, I guess. He can make water boil or freeze.”
“Or blood?” The realization presses on me, hot as a brand. “Or cause people to catch on fire?”
“Sure, Mag does that,” Rune admits, pushing himself up to his seat. “But not Mercy. Or he won’t. He’s not like Mag. She can kill sound, heat things up, and play with light, change colors, take away light or make things look like they aren’t there.”
“A light-bender?” I ask. Greeb had asked if Rimma and I were light-benders when Mag first claimed us by the stream. “What’s a light-bender?”
“Here’s what Mag says about light,” Rune explains. “Light is waves; different waves, different colors. It flows at things that suck it in or reflect it out. The color that things reflect out is what we see. So something looks red because that’s the only color it isn’t.” He laughs at me as I bite my lips. “Think of an apple. It soaks in all the color waves shooting at it, but it pushes away the red. That comes bouncing back at us and we see it.”
When I nod, he continues, “So what if you could bend those light rays and force them around something? You wouldn’t see it. You could make something or someone invisible, do some scary sneaking up.” He grins at me. “The Brothers of the Scar’s chief is a light-bender. That’s how they took their name. Left a lot of the People with their mark just for the laugh.” Rune tilts his head and fingers his tangled hair aside, revealing the reed-thin pink scar across his neck.
“Is Mag a light-bender?” I almost wish I hadn’t asked these questions, or that Rune refused me answers.
“She’s all of it. That’s why Ram stays out of her way. Their agreement, you might say.
“Why did Greeb ask if Rimma and I are light-benders?”
His lip quirking up in question, Rune peers at me sideways, dark hair shadowing his eyes. “Most of us see only one of you at a time. Mag sees you both, and my guess is Shy can too. But I never seen you two together, most of us haven’t.”
“You don’t see us both together, ever?” I clarify, the strangeness of some of our past interactions worming into my thoughts. I grip my own arms, surrendering to a desire to ensure I’m alive, a solid woman of flesh, here. “We’re not light-benders, Rune.”
“That’s what Mag says.” He shrugs and his gaze drifts back to the fire. “She’ll figure out your magic before we reach the North Tradepost. She wants to sell you as a pair and that won’t happen if she can’t break you apart.”
13
~Rimma~
One day I’ll kill Greeb. Even the Biter women cower under his flinty glare, afraid to complain to Mag or Ram or any of the others about what he does to us. He knows ways to abuse and torment and still leave us doves. He stalks us, puts his obscene fingers on us, his stinking breath in our faces only to see the horror, to feel us cringe with fear and loathing. I wonder what he’ll do when he finds Mari, one of his claims, gone.
As long as he keeps his filth away from Angel, I’ll await my perfect opportunity. My eyes are a desert, my body as hard as baked clay. I refuse to cry, to close my eyes and look away, to gasp or writhe or fight when he gropes. When his hands paw me, I immerse my mind in death, on the knife I’ll drive into his eye, or throat or groin. In my mind’s eye, I inure myself to the feel, sight, and smell of his blood. I taste it on my lips, swallow it, hear his grunt as I plunge the handle home. I’m a corpse to his lust, and he hates me for it.
Since Heaven’s fall, I’ve watched us dwindle from two thousand to a score over a hundred. My father is dead, my mother a slave to the Brothers of the Scar. I have seen the deaths of friends, of children, of women I respected and ridiculed, of men I loved and despised. Some of us are cowed, others defiant. Many now try to adapt to the ways of our conquerors, to belong and protect a sense of place, build our own little bone walls and hope we aren’t traded. Our men battle like small boys for a place among the bullies; our women blush, pleased to find themselves pregnant; our children play, freed of God’s restraint.
We, the doves, are unlikely to feel the beaded wires removed from our ears until we’re sold.
His back to the sickroom wall, Greeb finishes cleaning his nails with his knife and watches me, a wolf studying his prey. He appears relaxed, his muscled body at ease, arms crossed over his chest, but his mass is poised, ready to strike. It’s his task to guard us, his turn to keep us safe from predators among the Biters. Sloot twitches beside him, licking his lips, the thin Biter never still, never far.
“Don’t provoke them,” Junipur whispers her warning. The frail Biter woman stares at me as if I’m a lamb and she’s spotted a lion prowling the hallway. “If something happens, I’ll have to tell Mag. Then he’ll kill me.”
“You’re not his to kill,” I state as I narrow my eyes at Greeb.
“I don’t belong to anyone and my children die before they’re born.” With a finger, she turns my head to face her, dark-hollowed eyes begging me. “I’m the least of value among us. He’d owe a debt to the pack, but a small one.”
“It’s too late,” I tell her as Greeb hunts me across the room, leaving Sloot to guard the door. “Go. If you don’t see it, you don’t need to tell Mag.” She glances worriedly from me to my stalker and scampers to one of the back rooms, out of sight. The other doves curl up in the shadows where they lay as I work myself up to sit with my back against the wall.
A hungry glint in his eye, Greeb tosses his knife, flipping it, hilt spinning and landing again in his palm. He sinks to one knee beside me, black-bearded face fierce with amusement, the scar by his eye snaking like a devil’s smile line. “Your turn to pant,” he informs me as he grabs my face and works his knife blade between my teeth, the back of my head pressed to the wall. My hands grip his fist and wrist, holding the knife-tip from the back of my throat. The blade slips further into my mouth, the salty taste of blood on my cut tongue. I can’t let go to fight his other hand that fumbles with the knot on my trousers. I would burn him with the hatred in my eyes, but I see Mag hobble into the room, Sloot gesturing and hissing with panic.
“You think Ram won’t give me your hide, eh, Greeb?” she snarls, rapping Sloot’s shins with her staff, the skinny Biter yelping and cringing in pain. “Think he won’t let me burn you up like a torch? Watch you dance with your skin and hair on fire?”
Greeb slides the knife from my mouth and slams it to the floor beside me. He yanks on the knot one last time before letting go as he twists to face her. “I’ll trade you this one. Give you both of mine.”
“Gah. Pfft.” Mag spits at his offer. “Them white-haired doves is worth six, a horse and cart for Mag to ride in comfort. If I undo the magic, I got two for trade, but they’re near as good together. They’re going north. You want them, buy them there.”
The Biter rises to his feet, standing over me as though he already owns me, the knife lying by my knee. “We’ll see what she’s worth when we get there,” he says.
“Best mind your own claims, Greeb.” Mag’s grin shows a row of brown teeth separated by empty gaps. “We just heard around the fire that your claim is one of them done run. Looks like mine is right here.”
Greeb’s eyes dart across our faces. He stomps through the rooms, shouting for Mari and Reann. I hear a yelp as he finds Reann, the hard crack of his hand across her face, her whimpering pleas that she didn’t know. I slide down and roll to my side, my blanket hiding the abandoned blade. All the while, Mag stands in the doorway, cackling and snorting. She’s another I’ll kill when I get the chance.
Without a word, Greeb pushes by her and disappears, cursing into the hall’s darkness, Sloot scampering on his heels.
**
Angel and I work in the kitchen. She washes dirt from pounds of potatoes and carrots while I chop and chop and chop, hunched on a stool, my arms heavy as lead, fatigued from the effort. Mag’s determined I’m well enough for kitchen duties and wasting away from idleness. At least in the kitchen I’m free from winter’s cold. In truth, I can hardly spend another day curled on the floor. Those of us still breathing are bound to drag on with our lives.
Six Biters left yesterday morning to hunt down the runners, spears and flat bows on their shoulders, quivers, slings, and knives crowding leather belts. No one speaks of it, each of us waiting, hoping, wavering between certainty that our runners will find their way free and certainty they’ll be caught, another harsh lesson playing itself out for the rest of us. Angel frowns and scrubs at the gritty roots in a muddy bucket of water. Greeb’s knife rests in the pocket of my trousers, blade wrapped in a filthy rag.
Outside, I see Tomis.
He’s my age, seventeen, and of all Heaven’s men, he’s the first to craft a place for himself among the People.
He and Sloot unload a cart of logs and branches into the courtyard, the third of the afternoon. “Why are they bringing so much wood?” I ask Tarra, one of Ram’s women, a pretty, chestnut-eyed redhead from Utopia who kneads bread at the table’s other end.
“To celebrate the hunt,” she replies softly, her eyes glancing up to meet mine. Her amber hair brushes her shoulders, her belly showing a round bump. “During the summer, when we follow the rivers, a hunt brings meat and it’s a time for feasting. This hunt is different, but still a hunt. I suspect it will be hard for you.”
“Why? What do you mean?”
A long sigh shudders Tarra’s shoulders. “We had runners too,” she confesses. “In the beginning on our way to Paradise. We thought if just a few could get there first then…Well, I hardly know what we expected. We weren’t thinking, just afraid, just reacting to feeling so out-of-control.” Her hands stop and rest in the sticky dough. “You should accept this new life, Rimma. Other women observe your defiance and bravery and think there might be a way to go…backwards. But there’s no going back. The River Walkers are harsh and barbaric, but this is a savage and broken world. We have to make the best of it for our children.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch Angel listening as she watches me. In the dim light, her iron-gray irises beg me to pay attention, and I can’t help but wonder. What exactly am I hoping for? Where do I think my sister and I are going? To another Garden that may not let us in, that may fall as we run screaming through its gate? And who could possibly want children in this broken world of little souls who grow into Biters, who rape and slaughter or kneel and grovel before their masters? I can’t allow Angel to be sold to some Biter, fucked against her will, prized as a bauble or kicked into the ditch like a piece of shit. So what’s left?
The heels of Tarra’s hands press into the dough, folding it over and molding it. She’s no longer awaiting a response from me. I have none and return to chopping, avoiding the challenge still lingering in Angel’s eyes.
An hour later, when Rune sticks his head in the door, I’m resting my head on folded arms at the table. “Mag wants you all out. They’re coming.” He grins at me as I lift my face, his dark eyes polished with excitement. Behind him, the woodpile bursts into snapping flames, a successful hunt demanding celebration. My knife slaps heavily against my thigh as I walk out the door, swaddled in my blanket, my heart pounding and blood racing. Angel and I file into the courtyard and stand with the other doves. Draped in his pungent furs, head newly shaved, Ram emerges from his quarters, the muscled chief planting his feet at the forefront of the waiting crowd, stroking his split beard as the Biters gather.
My eyes squint into the distance along the West Spoke and glimpse nothing, but Mag assures us she sees them, and before long, I do too, a row of men loping toward us, Greeb among them, two stumbling women in tow, hands tied before them.
“Where are the others?” Angel asks. My courage fails me and I don’t answer. “Where are the others?” she asks again.
As they near, I catch sight of the women’s faces, Mari and Sendra, stripped to their pale skin, bodies bruised, lips swollen, hair tangled and blowing across their eyes, their knees and elbows scraped from falling. They trip on unsteady legs, slam to the frozen ground and stagger to their bare feet. Time crawls cruelly by before the Biters enter the courtyard where Mari and Sendra collapse to their knees, too deeply in shock to cry. Greeb throws a leather cord to Ram. “The rest of them,” Greeb shouts.