Divided (7 page)

     ‘But what about the Festival?!’ I ask, getting excited. ‘It’s coming up soon and tribes cross paths then!’

     ‘You have seen me before! We have met!’ my father says happily. ‘Five years ago, when you were only eleven. I spoke to you... do you remember me?’

     ‘I met loads of people then, who were you?’

     ‘I was a little drunk at the time, I’ll admit.’

     ‘There was a drunk man who came up to me who told me that one day, there will be no tribes and that we will all unite as one to bring down the “greater power”, but his breath smelled of alcohol and it was a foolish thing to think.’

     ‘Well, I’ll tell you again Arys. And this time you can be assured that there is no alcohol in my system... it’s banned in my tribe.   We’re taking the Hunters down, tribes are uniting as one. It’s down to you now; you must find your sister.’

     We both say goodbye. Papa leaves the tent while we do. We’re both crying as the phone’s light goes off, and my father’s voice isn’t there anymore.

12

Kai

I’m sat with Iris as Arys walks out of her tent with her backpack over her shoulder. She attracts a lot of attention and I can instantly see why. Her sword is swinging slowly at her side, supported by her belt. Her usually long hair is tied back, and her clothes are different to the clothes she always wears, they’re heavier and more weatherproof than her usual clothes. I recognise them from one of our forages into a destroyed town from over a year ago. She walks over to me quickly, tossing me my packed backpack at my feet.

     ‘Come on, lover boy. Kiss your fiancé goodbye, we’re leaving soon,’ she says sarcastically, winking at Iris.

     I take her advice and pull Iris up to her feet and kiss her, holding her by her waist. I hear Arys walking away, and separate from Iris.

     ‘You’re welcome!’ Iris says, smiling at me. ‘I do
so
hope you remember that kiss as you’re risking your life and leaving your poor
fiancé
emotionally unstable back here...’

     I aim a punch at her arm, which she dodges easily.

    ‘You’d make a better woman, Kai,’ she jokes. ‘You’re a far more exceptional kisser than a fighter...’

     ‘Yes, naturally,’ I say, pointing my thumb at Arys. ‘I’ve had a lot of practice.’

     Iris laughs at this, before throwing me my sheathed curved knife.

     ‘Jokes aside now. I’m going to miss you,’ she says seriously, her eyes fixed on me.

     ‘Me too, Iris,’ I reply.

     We hug and I notice Arys watching us in the distance. She’s sat with Papa, holding Alaoden and constantly glancing at us.

     ‘She needs more convincing, I think.’ Iris says, pulling me into a final kiss.

     She laughs as I pull away.

     I fix my knife to my belt and carry my backpack. ‘Goodbye, Iris.... and remember to write songs of my heroic tales for when I get back.’

     ‘Oh, but of course!’ she smirks. ‘You will become a legend amongst us.’ 

     I leave her by the fire pit, and go towards Arys and Papa. Papa sees me and asks for a private word. He stands up and we walk out of earshot of Arys.

     ‘She loves you,’ he tells me bluntly.

     ‘I know,’ I say to him, not looking at him in the eye.

     ‘And she believes that you and Iris are engaged now?’ he whispers.

     ‘I think so.’

     I think back to yesterday. It was Papa’s idea that Iris and I should be engaged. He arranged the whole thing. He thought that if Arys believes that I don’t love her, then she would be able to re-connect to her sister and we can escape this fear we’re all living in. He planned it perfectly. As soon as he left Arys with Alaoden, he rushed to Iris, telling her to meet me with Kai at the forest border. Iris took me by my hand from the fire pit and we met Papa a couple of minutes later. He took Iris and me a few yards into the forest and explained everything about Arys’s sister and the connection and love. I felt ashamed of my affections, though Papa understood. He told us how to play it all out, how I should kiss Arys one final time, then Iris begins a fight and then I take Iris’ side.

     ‘Protect her,’ Papa tells me.

     ‘I will.’

I find Arys holding Alaoden next to his cot. He’s sleeping and she’s singing softly to him.

     ‘I might never see him again,’ she murmurs, once she finished the song.

     She digs into her pocket, pulling out a small pendant. It has a short string to fit Alaoden, and a lion, dangling loosely from the end. The lion is carved out of wood. It’s smooth and holds a lot of detail.

     ‘Protect the Tribe, Alaoden,’ she whispers gently to him, kissing his forehead.

     She lightly carries him back to his cot, resting him softly back inside. He stretches in his sleep and clutches the blanket, the lion resting on his bare chest.

     ‘Arys, we have to go. The-’

     ‘The Hunters, yes I know!’ she snaps at me

     She takes something else out of her pocket, keeping it enclosed in the palm of her hand.

     ‘I made something for you too,’ she says, opening her hand to reveal another pendant.

     This pendant is a bear with a longer string than Alaoden’s. The bear I recognise as the bear cub that I had to kill the other night. It is small and a light brown colour. The bear looks like it’s going to attack. To me, it represents death and how even the innocent have to kill to survive in this world. The Hunters I’ve killed to survive. I put it around my neck. The string is long and the cub rests against my heart.

     ‘Thank you,’ I tell her. ‘I love you.’

     I take away all emotion out of the last words, leaving her with the meaning I put across: new world love.

     I estimate that we have another six hours of daylight left, and urge Arys that it’s time to leave. The plan is to leave without a word, only two people in camp knowing that we’re leaving: Iris and Papa. We will be announced dead to the rest of the Tribe, captured and killed by Hunters. The Tribe expect us to be hunting together anyway, making our exit easier.

     I look around at the people I’m leaving behind; people I might never see again. I notice one thing about them all. They all have wooden pendants hanging from their necks. I spot a horse, a goat, a rabbit; all animals that describe their personality. I look at Papa, noticing an eagle pendant that I didn’t notice earlier. Zeke has a wolf, and Iris has a squirrel.

     ‘Did you make all of these?’ I ask Arys, astonished at her. I look once more at the bear around my neck.

     ‘Yeah, I guess I had too much free time,’ she replies.

    ‘They’re amazing!’

     You can tell how much time she spent on them. Each one is as detailed as mine and Alaoden’s. The teeth of my bear are slightly visible, through his half-open mouth.

     ‘I don’t want to be forgotten,’ she says, looking at everyone.

     ‘We’d better go, are you ready?’ I ask her.

     We turn towards the forest and start walking. A voice shouts from behind us after barely ten steps.

     ‘Hey! Arys!’ the voice calls.

     A young girl runs towards us. I recognise her to be Cara, the girl with the horse pendant. Her long brown hair covering her face after running. She pushes it out of her eyes.

     ‘We want to come with you,’ she says excitedly. ‘Papa said we’re going to be foragers like you!’

     Arys laughs and I watch her face. Behind the smile, her eyes are sad and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. If things go wrong, we may never see her again. Another girl comes running up, joining Cara’s side. Her sister and best friend, Holly. Her pendant is a sheep. It makes sense to me now, as I know she never leaves Cara’s side. Both of the girls are young. Cara is seven, and Holly two years younger than her. Arys hugs them both, promising that she will take them both one day, but not today.

     ‘Protect your family for me while we’re gone,’ I tell Cara.

     She blows a raspberry at me. She and I have never agreed on much, but she seems to sense something wrong, as for the first time, she hugs me too. I return the hug and stand up, watching the girls run to Papa. From a distance, we watch as Papa hoists Cara onto one knee, and Holly on another. His laugh visible from this distance.

     ‘Do you know if he ever had kids?’ I ask, watching him as Cara talks to him, her arm motions supporting the story she’ll be telling him.

     ‘I pray every day that he didn’t,’ Arys replies sadly. ‘I never want to imagine what it’s like to not only lose your wife, but to lose your children.’

     I realise we’ve been putting off leaving for too long now. I readjust my backpack, and turn away from Papa, his laughter still an imprint in my mind. Arys walks alongside me.

13

Arys

We reach the edge of the forest and I turn back one last time. From this distance, I see people I can’t distinguish walking around, and tents dotted about. This life is all I’ve ever known, and while we move location regularly, the atmosphere has never changed. This life is home and I’m leaving it.

     ‘Ready?’ Kai asks me, squeezing my hand.

     ‘Ready,’ I reply, looking away from the Tribe and stepping into the forest.

Part Two:

The Connection

14

Kayra

I wake up from my nightmare again. It has been replaying constantly since I can remember. I know it isn’t just a nightmare though, it’s a memory. I know the nightmare shouldn’t end there... something happens next, but I always wake up when the black car door slams shut. I remember my sister, my mother, my father. My sister is alive, I feel her emotions, and I know when she’s upset, happy, scared... I don’t feel her emotions like I feel my own, but they are a great part of me somehow. Right now, I feel her frustration. Her emotions have been ranging madly between content and agony over the past forty eight hours. I know she’s been in love, and she was betrayed. Every time her emotions spike to a massive extreme, I feel I lose a part of her. My mind can’t tune back into her and I’m left feeling alone. She’s still a great part of me.

     I lay in bed staring at the bunk above mine, lost in thought. We are all taught that we’re safe inside the Compound, and everything outside is dangerous. Life here is controlled into strict training routines and specific education. We do get allocated hours in the schedule for socialising, or times for relaxation, but our lives mainly consist of training. After that, the new world will properly start; a controlled world where everyone is equal and striving for a common goal.

     I distantly hear the door open and close behind me, like an echo, and someone’s voice finds its way into my thoughts, pulling me back to reality.

     ‘Shower is freezing!’ I hear the voice whisper, ‘The boys must have gotten up early
again
! My bet is that it’s purely just to annoy us!’

     I recognise the voice now as my best friend, Nina. I sit up in bed and duck under the metal beam supporting the top bunk. I’ve learnt from experience not to get up too fast and hit my head on it. Nina is wrapped in a towel, her usually dark and curly hair now damp and straight due to the shower water. We all have short hair here, making it ideal for training, and all of us are between the ages of fifteen and sixteen. According to Victor Thorne, our leader, we were all saved as babies from the disaster that destroyed the world to “save mankind”.

     Nina pulls out her bag of makeup and begins to line her eyes in black, her face contorted in concentration as she carefully watches her reflection in the mirror.

     ‘What are you getting all dressed up for? Or should I be asking
who
are you getting all dressed up for?’ I ask quietly, winking at her reflection opposite me.

     She finishes applying the makeup and smiles at her reflection, before sitting next to me on my bunk. The other girls are still asleep, so we talk in low voices.

     ‘You know what today is, don’t you?’ She asks me, her eyes lit up brightly.

     She must notice my blank expression, as she tells me anyway.

     ‘Today is an inspection day! The inspectors are coming and I want to impress mine! All inspectors are loaded!’

     I roll my eyes at her. I want to say I understand her mad desire to find a tolerable man who can pay for her rich taste in design and quality, but I can’t even bring myself to consider it.

     ‘You can’t ask out an inspector!’ I groan at her. I must say, this is a new record for her. ‘Don’t be stupid! He could be old for all you know! And do you seriously think you can put up with the way they put you down for anything out of place?’

     ‘Ew! Thanks for pointing the age out!’ she says, horrified. ‘But really, it’s impossible. I mean, when was the last time you saw anyone older than twenty five? But I haven’t been put down; I would never know how that feels, Kayra, as I naturally look perfect for all the inspectors.’

     I don’t bother arguing with her as she’s probably right. The inspectors are almost always a male under the age of thirty, trained specifically to notice imperfections in anyone, but as Nina makes more effort than most of us when it comes to impressing, she’s yet to be put down for a fault during inspection.

     ‘I’m sorry!’ she says.

     ‘What for?!’ I ask.

     ‘I forgot that you remember your parents.’ she says.

     I think over what she’s just said, not realising where my parents were mentioned.

     ‘Don’t be,’ I reply, smiling. ‘It’s a good memory.’

     ‘And all the screaming in the middle of the night? I know you dream of them. You scream a name.’

     ‘You really want
this
conversation now?’ I ask, rolling my eyes.

     I love her to bits, but she has horrible timing.

     ‘Do you have a better time to have this conversation? If you haven’t yet noticed, this is the first time we’re awake before the other girls in months!’

     She has a point, and so I nod my head, planning how to get around the topic.

     ‘I screamed my own name. “Arys”. My true name,’ I lie.

     ‘So that’s the reason you changed your name? You have a bad memory of that name, or it connects you too much to beyond the Compound?’

     ‘I think it’s a bit of both, really,’ I say.

     Nina doesn’t know about my sister. She can’t ever know, and she’s the one person I want to tell, who has earned the right to know. I only ever told one person, and that was a mistake.

     ‘Unit 7b, report to Sector Twelve in fifteen minutes,’ I hear loudly. ‘Training with Unit 7a’

     The voice echoes throughout the several rooms before dying out. It came from the small speaker in the corner of the ceiling, used solely for announcements. Unit 7b is all the girls in this area of the Compound, with the boys in Unit 7a. There are four hundred of us altogether in this section. 200 girls and 200 boys. There are several other Units, but we’re taught nothing about them, and we don’t even know how many sections of the Compound there are. We sometimes see people from other sections around other buildings in the Compound, but our strict timetables keep us separated, so very few people have ever spoken to them. The girls around us begin to wake up, rubbing their eyes and groaning.

     ‘Good luck today,’ Nina says brightly in her usual volume.

     ‘You too!’ I reply, returning the grin.

I walk into the Training Building. It’s one of the largest buildings in the Compound, with twenty floors dedicated to various training exercises. The Compound was once a large city. Before the earthquake, scientists predicted that this is one of the very few cities that will remain mostly protected from the destruction. A thick mountainous stone wall was built around half the city, topped with barbed wire, making unwanted entry or escape impossible. The wall was built taller than the Training Building, and it encloses us inside. The other half of the city was destroyed by the earthquake and from what they’ve told us, entry into it is near impossible and highly suicidal. We were flown in as babies, and the Compound remained standing, as promised to our parents. The Compound is just over thirteen and a half square miles, and most of it is open to us, with few buildings owned by Unity, the government of the country. People have been dared to go in one over the years and the punishments have all been brutal.

     For fifteen minutes this morning, all of the girls in Unit 7b are to train alongside the boys in Unit 7a in final preparation for the inspection. Though most of the boys are much stronger and heavier in weight, the girls can often outsmart them with skills and techniques the boys are ignorant to.

     Chief Matthews strides into the hall in his dark uniform, his many badges and medals proudly standing out prominently on the front of his shirt. None of us know exactly how old he is, and he’s often the topic of late-night gossip in the girl’s sleeping quarters. He’s never seemed to age since we’ve been living here. It’s as if he stopped aging at age twenty five and his features have been unchanging since. He has a short buzz cut hair, dark brown eyes and a barking voice, familiar to us all. He calls out numbers in this barking tone, pairing us all up with an opponent. Our number is the rank out of two hundred that we currently hold. I’m paired with Zach, who ranks eight out of two hundred. My rank is seven out of two hundred, which I’m proud of.

     Zach approaches me confidently, his face already lit up with his signature grin; he’s hilariously entertaining, which is distracting. He uses his humour to his advantage during training. He has light brown hair and has a goofy smile which I find absurdly cute. He doesn’t look muscular or even fit to fight, and his appearance makes him look well-suited to the simulation games, as opposed to combat training.

     The bell sounds suddenly and the sound of everyone advancing on their targets is heard throughout the room. I block out the world around me, like I’ve learnt to do over the years, and focus on Zach. We have a similar strategy: Circle each other until the opponent makes the first move. We’ve been staring too long, and I aim a kick at his chin. He’s too fast for me, and ducks, grasping my leg and spinning me around. I’m caught off guard, and I’m now facing the wall with my left leg held firmly in his hand. I use his grip on my leg to force my right leg up, twisting my body. My aim isn’t perfect, but my right foot makes slight contact with his face and he releases me. I land perfectly in a light crouch, and then slowly stand back up. Zach fell to the ground and now lies there with his messed-up hair covering his face, so I take my opportunity to seize a wooden training pole from the wall. Before he catches his breath, I pin him to the floor. I begin counting down from five, feeling Chief Matthews’ eyes on the back of my head. Just as I reach two, Zach smirks, kicking my feet. I fall to the floor. I was unprepared for his retaliation and the wind is knocked out of me.

     ‘You’re too predictable,’ he says cheerfully, with a slight smirk. 

     He holds a foot on my chest, while the other kicks away the pole with a sharp snap. 

     ‘If only you had the agility and quick-thinking that comes naturally to people so close to perfection as me.’

     I dig my nails into his ankle, and watch with glee as the smirk slides from his face, being replaced by a surprised glare as he gives a short cry of pain. I grab the pole that he kicked away, while he pulls another from the wall. For several minutes, we move around each other, in a sort of comical dance, the sticks bouncing off each other with an echoing bang like that of a handgun. Finally, he swings his pole towards my ankles, attempting to trip me up. I move quickly, jumping swiftly over his pole and hitting him in the back with mine. He falls to the floor just as the bell sounds once more. The fighting is over.

     ‘Pathetic!’ Chief Matthews cries to the group. ‘With that standard, you won’t stand a chance against a real enemy.’

     I glance around the group of people. Some are looking ashamed, while the majority of us are ignoring his words; it seems to be his job to put us down.

     ‘Inspection! Half an hour!’ he continues, before marching from the room, his hands clasped firmly behind his back.

     I offer Zach my hand to help him up. He takes it, his goofy smile returning as he speaks to me.

     ‘I could have got you, it was your hair that distracted me this time,’ he complains.

     He always finds a way to blame me for his loss, and never accepts defeat willingly.

     ‘When will you finally admit that we girls are more strategic than you boys?’ I ask him.

     He laughs and releases my hand. ‘Meet you in the cafe later?’

     ‘Yes, of course!’ I agree.

     He leaves and I set out to find Nina in the crowd of people. I spot her flirting with her opponent who is staring at her, as if not believing his luck.