Divided (4 page)

     It takes until the evening for us to set up camp, working in the heat of the afternoon sun. All twenty or so tents are set up, their sizes ranging from the large tents we use while travelling, to smaller, circular one-man tents. A permanent fire pit is dug into the ground and lined with stones collected from a nearby lake. I share my tent with Papa, and I finish unpacking my rucksack while he watches me. The tent is quite small, though the largest of the few our Tribe has. It holds two blankets that we use for beds, with a wooden stool separating them. In our first camp, the thing I remember most is the smell of books in our tent. Papa always carried books with him, back when he had more strength to do that. Though time slowly stole his strength, and he had to make sacrifices. He only carries seven books now.

     ‘You’re becoming so independent,’ he smiles, passing me my final small bag of personal belongings.

     ‘I always have been, Papa,’ I reply, turning to face him.

     His possessions, though few, are already scattered around the tent and his staff is leaning against the wall. He sits on his stool, a book open in his hands and I instantly recognise the cover as one his favourites.

     ‘Papa?’ I ask him.

     He looks up from his book and smiles at the sight of me.

     ‘Yes, Arys?’ he replies.

     ‘Can I go to the lake to get water for the Tribe?’ I ask.

     ‘Of course, though you can’t go alone, the Hunters might be around,’ he says and my heart flutters briefly, thinking of Kai. He calls for Zeke and my heart sinks. After a minute that I spend protesting, Zeke comes into the tent.

     ‘Yeah?’ he asks Papa.

     ‘You and Arys are to get some water from the lake. Hamish and Aliny can direct you to it. Keep an eye on Arys, will you?’

     Zeke nods, before leaving the tent. Papa smiles at me encouragingly before I leave the tent, following Zeke. I know that Papa wants me to witness Zeke foraging and to know how great a protector he is. We find Hamish, who shows us the way to the lake, and we set off into the forest in the direction he pointed us in.    

     ‘You don’t have to follow me, I’m fine on my own,’ I say angrily to Zeke. He turns on me, drawing himself proudly up to his full height.

     ‘You know what Papa said,’ Zeke says smugly, clearly enjoying this. ‘Besides, I’m stronger than you.’

     He has a point, I can see how strong he is and how much attention he gets because of it. But he called me weak.

     We reach the lake in less than five minutes, and I step into the water, wading out to get closer to cleaner water further out. I look back at Zeke, who is now making a big show of slowly taking his shirt off, revealing his muscular body. I roll my eyes and put as much distance as I can between us.

     ‘You don’t like it?’ he shouts at me. ‘You’re the one marrying me, so you’d better get used to seeing this every day!’

     I hate that it’s common knowledge in camp who is arranged to marry who. I think back to being with Kai, in which nobody knows and I enjoy the memory of last night as I gather water. Zeke catches up to me, and smiles sarcastically. Just as I’m about to make a remark, I spot at least five Hunters out of the corner of my eye. My reflexes instantly kick in and I grab Zeke, pulling him underwater with me, hoping he would allow me to and understand what’s happening. Luckily, I swim often and can hold my breath for a long time and thankfully, Zeke understands and doesn’t resist when we go under. I can feel my heart beating faster and faster. What if we we’re caught now? We should have come with more people and can’t possibly outrun them. I wait for as long as I can, holding my breath. When I can’t hold my breath any longer, we both swim back up and I look around. The Hunters have vanished and relief sweeps over me. I catch my breath and make sure Zeke is okay. He’s shaking water out of his hair. Just as I’m about to carry on gathering water, he pulls me into him, holding me in what I suspect he thinks is a comforting way. I throw him off harshly.

     ‘Leave me alone! I’m not yours and never will be if I can help it!’ I hiss at him.

     He gives me a hurt look which I ignore as I swim back to dry land. I walk quickly back up the hill to camp and leave Zeke to carry my empty bucket and bring the rest of the water.

     I arrive back at camp alone and drenched to notice Kai setting the fire for tonight. He sees me and smiles as I pass him. I wander around camp, watching people as they go about their business. A few of the younger children are play fighting with sticks and invite me to join them, to which I politely refuse. The animal hunters are out, and for the first time in several months, everything seems okay. Though there are merely sixty of us, camp always feels full to me. I can’t help it anymore, so I walk back to the fire and sit with Kai.

     ‘I saw you leave earlier with my brother,’ he says coolly as soon as I join him.

     He’s busying himself with the fire, but I can tell that it’s bothered him.

     ‘I couldn’t help it,’ I insist. ‘Papa wouldn’t let me leave alone and called for Zeke before I could say anything else.’

     ‘Then next time, actually stand up to him and request that I assist you, instead of just going along with
everything
Papa says! Why do you do everything you’re told?!’

     He stands up and walks away, muttering something about getting more firewood from our dwindling supplies. His words hurt me, but it’s not the only thing that’s been bothering me. Nobody thinks twice when Zeke is out on his own, yet if I have to have someone with me if I leave camp. Papa is too protective of me, and he refuses to have me properly trained, despite it potentially saving my life one day. I have nowhere else to go, so I head back to mine and Papa’s tent. I see Papa sat outside the tent, holding the camp’s newest baby, Alaoden. I decide that now is the best time to speak to him. He doesn’t look at me when I reach him.

     ‘Papa, I want to be trained. I want to fight like the others. You’ve been protecting me for too long now and if Kai weren’t with me, those Hunters we saw could have killed me last night. You can’t just marry me off to Zeke and think I’ll be safe. But the best way to really protect me is train me to protect myself!’ I take a breath.   

     Everything came out a lot faster than I should have, though he appears to get the gist of what I was saying. He continues to avoid my gaze as he speaks.

     ‘One day, Alaoden will grow up and be a good, strong leader. The best there is. He will protect the people, but first we must protect him,’ he says, blatantly ignoring what I’d just said.

     ‘Papa! Please listen to me!’ I cry, forcing him to look at me.

     ‘I’m listening,’ he says gently. ‘Be patient and wait. You too will become like young Alaoden here.’

     ‘Please Papa!’ I say, getting impatient with him now. ‘Teach me to fight!’

     My raised voice unsettles Alaoden, who begins to cry. Papa was always good with children. He rocks him softly, humming a familiar tune in his deep voice until Alaoden’s wailing ceases.

     ‘You have something to tell me, don’t you?’ he asks suspiciously. ‘You’re hiding something, holding back.’

     How does he know?! I decide in a split-second to be partially honest with him; it’s better than lying and to see his disappointment when he finds out himself.

     ‘Yes, Papa,’ I admit.

     He doesn’t seem surprised, and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

     ‘I don’t want to marry Zeke, Papa,’ I whisper to him.

     ‘But Zeke is a perfect husband!’ Papa objects, frowning at me slightly.

     ‘No, Papa. He isn’t perfect for me. He would be a much better match for Iris. She admires him much more than I do!’

    Papa shakes his head and chuckles slightly, as if finding my horrific situation funny.

     ‘No,’ he says, the smile vanishing from his face as he becomes serious again. ‘She’s going to marry Kai. Without Iris, there will be no one for Kai. The numbers are limited here, you know that! And who else is there for you to marry? Unless of course...’  

     Realisation hits him and he looks at me in a way he’s never looked at me before.

     ‘Kai,’ he says finally after a long moment.

     ‘Please, Papa,’ is all I manage to say.

     I watch as he places Alaoden into his cot, and grasps both of my hands in his.

     ‘Now I see, Arys. I know that look. I’ve known that look for over sixty years and you know where it leads. I hear the whispers about me; you know what I’ve been through. It leads to pain, loss, and death.’

     I look into his sad eyes, still the same after fifteen years of knowing him. His face is older, and he has less hair than when I first knew him, but the pain that he always carried is still evident inside his eyes.

     ‘But Papa,’ I beg, ‘I’m already in love with him. You of all people know that once love is there, there is never any going back!’ 

     I’ve ruined it now. I realise that I should have kept quiet about this, as he will do anything to stop me getting hurt by Old World love. I’m going to have to marry Zeke. He holds his head in his hands and lets out a long, slow breath.

     ‘Are you sure you love him? Love him in the Old World sense of the word?’

     I pause, considering this question. Of course I’ve known I’ve loved him for a long time, but is this really what I want? Papa notices my pause and raises his head, his eyes piercing mine in a look warning me. The look he gives me frightens me in some ways, but I hold his stare.

     ‘Come back to me tonight, before the sun sets and tell me your answer. I want you to be sure,’ Papa tells me as he stands up. ‘Kai isn’t like his brother, he’s much more guarded and is hiding something; I can see it in his eyes. Whatever your decision,
be careful
.’

     He grasps his staff, leaning all of his weight onto it as he walks slowly off into the distance. I watch him until he turns behind a tent and vanishes from my sight.

     I look down at Alaoden; I figured I have to watch over him now Papa has gone off. I carefully pick him up, taking him out of his cot. The cot was carved by Alaoden’s mother, Christina, the woman who first taught me how to craft wood. It’s elegantly designed, the pictures along the sides telling a story of love, the sacrificial type of love. Alaoden murmurs quietly in his sleep. He’s so small and delicate that I feel I could easily break him. I think back to what Papa said about him becoming a powerful leader. Is this how Papa thinks of me too? That right now I’m only small and delicate? That I’m someone who is easily broken? In Kai’s dream, I kill Hunters to save my baby. I feel I should protect Alaoden and he isn’t even my own child. The Hunters are so inhumane that they could want to kill something this pure and innocent. I kiss his forehead and whisper ‘I will always love and protect you, Alaoden,’ to him. He wakes up and takes in his new surroundings. The lack of Papa’s familiar presence begins to make him cry. I remember Papa humming the recognisable tune that I grew up with. The lyrics come back to me and I sing to him, rocking him slowly in time with the song.

Fight the nightmares that try to come,

Don’t give up till the battle’s won,

Slay the monster, kill the beast,

Stay alive at the very least.

Save your town and save your kin,

Never let the Hunters win,

Hush now, child, don’t try to flee,

One day soon, we’ll all be free.

     He drifts off to sleep just as I finish, his eyelids covering his bright blue eyes. I lower him back into his cot and slide my hand across the pictures depicting the story of Christina’s sacrificial love.

     Engraved, there's a picture of a woman with her tribe. On the next panel, a man stands, but he's alone. The woman and man are holding hands in the next picture, and the woman is pregnant. But in the next, the man has gone, and the woman is alone again, until the next picture, when she has the baby in her arms. But this time, she’s crying. I never knew Alaoden's father, Christina speaks of him as a hero, giving hope to us all. Though all that's left of him in our Tribe is Alaoden, and his story that is told on this cot.

8

Kai

The fire is now roaring and several people join me in front of it, some throwing more firewood onto it, others cooking tonight’s meal. Today’s foraging team came back with a considerably better haul than Arys and I did, meaning that the wood they brought will keep the fire going through the night, and the food is enough to sustain us. Arys hasn’t spoken to me properly since this morning. I’ve been thinking all day and regret a lot of what I said to her. The punishments could be extreme for loving in the Old World way in this Tribe. Other Tribes allow it, but Papa knows it only leads to pain. I regret snapping at Arys earlier about Zeke, I shouldn’t be jealous of him, but maybe if I’d have been more like him, I could have actually been chosen for Arys instead of Zeke; I’m closer in age to her. I stare into the fire. Fire, just like this one only bigger is what burned my world; killed my family. Why didn’t it kill my brother and me too? My parents were naturally good at survival skills; none of that natural skill is in me, though it was all taught by several people in my first tribe. They might have died by now, but even if they survived, they’re dead to me and have been for fifteen years.

     I see Arys approaching me. She smiles at me, and I force a smile at her, which quickly becomes a genuine smile when she looks unmistakably happy to see me. I watch as she carefully chooses an apple from an apple tree near the fire, then jumps gracefully, catching two and pulling them back down with her. She tosses one to me and I clumsily try and grab for it. I miss and it hits me in my nose. She laughs and sits with me, taking a bite out of her own apple.

     ‘I talked to Papa,’ she announces, after swallowing the first bite.

     My heart drops. This is bad! I already know how her conversation with him must have gone, but she seems happy enough...

     ‘And?’ I ask her, hoping my nerves aren’t showing as much as I imagine they would be.

     ‘And he asked me if I really loved you. Like he loved, the Old World kind of love,’ she replies. ‘Don’t look like that! He asked me if I loved you and now he’s given me until sunset tonight to answer him truthfully.’

     What if she doesn’t truly love me? And worse... what if she does? I could be banished from the Tribe if I get too emotionally attached to her. I spent all day thinking of my actions and despite it being an amazing night, the reality of it is settling in. I can’t love her anymore, and she can’t love me. It’s the only way we can see each other anymore. I don’t want to voice these concerns to her anymore, I should have told her this before she spoke to Papa. Agony tears through me as I think of the consequences of what happened this morning.

     ‘What is your answer?’ I ask her, after several long moments of silence.

     ‘Spending time with Alaoden has helped me come to my decision,’ she says, to my complete confusion.

     ‘Alaoden? He’s only new-born! Surely his wisdom can’t be trusted yet,’ I laugh, unable to help myself.

     She laughs at this too, which eases the tension between us. She tosses her hair back and kneels in front of me, excitement burning in her eyes.

     ‘Kai, I want you to teach me to fight,’ she whispers to me, so people can’t listen in. ‘If your vision is true, and we have a child, I want to be able to protect her.’

     ‘Of course I can teach you how to fight!’ I respond, still smiling at her. She gets back up, and brushes the dirt off her knees.

     ‘If I’d have known you’d agree so soon, I wouldn’t have avoided you earlier,’ she laughs.

     The little anger at her left from this morning fades as quickly as it had come as she sits next to me, her shoulder brushing mine lightly. We watch the fire, both of us lost in thought. People come and go, collecting cooked food for their tents. If people are watching us, it doesn’t matter. We’ve been best friends since the moment we met and to everyone, it’s normal that we’re always together.

     ‘Arys, you have to go to Papa,’ I say quietly to her. She squeezes my hand to agree with me as she gets up to speak with him.