Renegade (8 page)

When she puts it like that, it does sound impressive.

I shrug, unsure what to say. ‘I don’t know. I’m just me.’

Jela smiles and lies on her front on the grass. ‘Exactly.
You’re
the reason.’

I feel embarrassed because it is something I would rather not think about and we break into an uncomfortable silence.

‘Will you tell me a story?’ Jela asks softly.

‘What about?’

‘Tell me about Martindale.’

After Jela returned from the King’s company, she didn’t speak to anyone. I would sit with her, telling her stories about my home and have shared memories with her I’ve never
thought about telling anyone before.

‘Do you remember Opie?’ I ask.

‘The other Imrin?’

It shouldn’t be funny but for some reason it is. As Jela giggles to herself, I find myself joining in until we end up shushing each other, which leads to another cacophony of stifled
laughs. It’s nice to feel young.

‘Yes, the other Imrin,’ I concede, still smiling. ‘My earliest memory of him is from when we were about five or six. There were a bunch of us all roughly the same age in a
field on the edge of the village playing this game where someone is “it” and the rest of you have to get away. You just run and shriek and then, eventually, it either gets dark or your
mum comes over telling you it’s time to go home. I was watching “it” chase Opie but then, as they were running, Opie’s shoe came flying off. He kept running for a bit as if
he hadn’t noticed but, because it was summer and the ground was hard, there were all these little stones and he ended up hobbling around. The grass wasn’t like this but it was still
long and as he stopped and got tagged, he turned around to look for his shoe. He was trying to retrace his steps but couldn’t see it.’

Jela picks a small white and yellow flower from the ground and pushes it into her hair. ‘Do you have daisies in Martindale?’ she asks.

‘Fields of them.’

She grins. ‘I’d love to see them one day. Anyway, what did you do to him?’

I try not to grin but the smell of the grass has brought the memory to the front of my mind. ‘I saw exactly where it was and picked it up and lobbed it in a bush when he wasn’t
looking.’

Jela splutters in outrage. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, I was just a girl and he was this big lad who lived down the road. Do you remember being young when you really liked someone?’

Jela grins. ‘Maybe.’

‘I think I knew then that he was someone I liked. You don’t know what those feelings really mean, so you end up annoying the other person instead. Our families always knew each
other. We would hang around as really young children, being naughty and getting into trouble. Our house was bigger and we’d celebrate birthdays and things like that together. Then there was
this period where I must have annoyed him every day for about five years.’

‘Really?’

‘I’d pinch him on the arm and call him “Dopey”. I would move all his things around at school, just to see if he noticed.’

‘What happened?’

I feel a lump in my throat thinking about him and his younger brother Imp. ‘I think I grew up. One day he was someone I was bugging, the next we would be out in the woods together,
running, climbing, hunting and talking. It was as if there was no middle ground.’

Jela sighs wistfully, as if I am telling her something she already knows. ‘Do you remember when I told you about my friend Lola when she ate some of the tan fruit and was
paralysed?’

‘Of course.’

It was her story that gave me the idea of how to escape the King. While he was temporarily crippled from the fruit juice, we ran for it.

‘The lad who found her was called Ayowen. He’s my Opie. It was really small where we lived and he was this lad I’d seen around the village but I was too young to know who
anyone was. One day I asked my mum who the kid playing in the mud was and she said “Ayowen”. I don’t know if it was the way she said it, but I couldn’t get it out of my head
for the rest of the day. I lay in bed that night saying it over and over: “Ay-o-wen”. After that, he wasn’t just the kid that always had dirty hands, suddenly he was
Ayowen.’

‘What happened?’

‘I didn’t have the courage to speak to him for a year!’

I am used to my chest and ribs hurting but this time it is because of laughter as I cannot control myself. Suddenly, I am no longer Silver Blackthorn: Offering and renegade. I am Silver
Blackthorn: immature teenager. It feels good to let go.

‘What happened when you spoke to him?’

‘He mispronounced my name. He called me “Jel-Ah”, instead of “Jee-lah”. I was so pleased he said something to me that I didn’t bother correcting him. He
called me the wrong name for about three years.’

I cannot stop myself from laughing again and it feels good to be talking about something that isn’t the King.

‘What does he look like?’ I ask.

‘This is going to sound strange but the main thing I remember are his eyebrows.’

‘
Eyebrows
?’

Jela shrugs. ‘I’m not sure. They’re really symmetrical and when he smiles they angle up in this way that fits with the rest of his face.’

I still don’t understand.
‘Eyebrows?’

She sniggers: ‘I know it sounds stupid. Anyway, what does Opie look like?’

‘He’s a little like Knave: blond and messy. Before I left, he’d started growing this little piece of stubble just because he could. It looked like he’d glued bristles
from our sweeping-up brush to his chin.’

Jela giggles but the way she sounds so girly reminds me of Opie’s brother Imp, when he once asked me why I wasn’t like a proper girl. In the past I have sometimes wished I could be
that person others expect me to be but now I’m not sure I will ever get that chance.

‘You missed something out,’ Jela says, sitting up. ‘What happened to Opie’s shoe?’

I smile as I remember. ‘He spent about forty-five minutes looking for it and was getting angrier and angrier. He kept turning to the other lads, saying: “One of you must have taken
it”. The whole time, he refused to take the other one off in case that went missing too, so he was hobbling around in one shoe before he gave up and limped home. When everyone had gone, I
sneaked out and fished it from the hedge, before leaving it on his front porch when it got dark.’

‘Ah, so you were good to him after all?’

‘Well I did spend the next few years calling him “Dopey”, “Mopey” and “No Hopey”, so I could have been a bit nicer.’

We share some water and talk more about our upbringings until it is time for Imrin and Pietra to keep watch. Because it is light, I think I’ll struggle to sleep but after resting my head
on my blanket and cuddling my tortoise, it feels like only seconds until Faith is nudging me awake, pointing to the dimming skies and saying we should start moving.

Walking at night is better from a safety point of view but the natural beauty of some of the scenery is lost without the light. Despite many of the villages being destroyed, there are still vast
green fields and glistening lakes that would have been magnificent during the day. Until the Offering, I had barely left Martindale and can tell from the others’ reactions that few of them
have seen anything other than their home towns and villages.

We stop to eat and rest every few hours and even though we have cans to eat from, Faith catches squirrels with basic snares and her knife so effortlessly that it is as if she has been doing it
forever. We light fires within tree lines and use our blankets to stop the orange glow from giving our position away.

At the end of our second night of walking, we find the remnants of another battered, abandoned town and sleep in a partially collapsed house, taking it in turns to share a real bed as the others
keep lookout. Over the course of the journey, I realise how everyone’s skills are working together for the group. Faith can do almost anything physical; she never runs out of energy and can
climb and hunt. Imrin is terrific with directions. I thought I would be able to follow the map at night but get lost too quickly. He instantly seems to know where north is and finds safe spots that
allow some of us to sleep as the lookout pairings are able to see for miles. Jela has become a nurse of sorts to Hart, who cannot hide how much he is struggling. He doesn’t cough as often as
he did but there are blood speckles on his clothes again where he cannot control himself. Pietra, meanwhile, just listens and watches. She knows she doesn’t have the natural ability Faith
does, but she takes everything on board and is able to offer ideas.

Midway through the third night, Faith tells us we are close to the edges of her home town. Middle England, Rom and the broken communications are in the distance but she leads us onto a ridge
overlooking the area in which she grew up, before we find a spot to settle. Although it is more dangerous to be out during the day, Faith says her parents will be in a cabin a few miles away, a
spot where they spend a few weeks each summer. She insists no one else knows about it.

There is glee in her voice as we plan to set off as soon as the sun rises. I am pleased for her but can feel something deep in my stomach, knowing that if her family aren’t around then
there is a reasonable chance my mother, Colt and Opie are in serious danger.

Travelling as a group of six during the night is one thing, but having our sought-after faces in the open during the day is a risk too far. As soon as the first wisps of
sunlight begin to appear, I ask Imrin, Pietra and Hart to wait and then Faith, Jela and myself head down the brow and trace the line of hedges until we are on the outskirts of the town.

It is a strange thing to notice but Faith walks differently as she leads us around the edge of the town and across a cobbled bridge before we reach a large field. There is almost a skip to her
step and she cannot stop smiling. ‘This is the long way round,’ she says. ‘There won’t be anyone who sees us this way, so we’ll be safer.’

I ask her to tell us about the cabin.

‘It’s on the edge of a lake not far out of town. It was built by my dad’s dad and was handed down. We save up our food and sneak there every summer for a week or so. As long as
we’re back to collect rations, no one notices. We’ve never told anyone about it because, well, you don’t, do you? It’s not good for people to know you have something they
don’t.’

She’s right about that.

‘You don’t have any brothers or sisters, do you?’ I ask.

‘No, it’s just me.’

As Faith leads us over the top of the field, we emerge into a small patch of trees that overlooks a lake. The water is a deep blue as the sun twinkles from the surface. There is a thin strip of
brown sand around the edge and a smattering of wooden shacks in various states of disrepair close to a muddy trail.

‘Does anyone else stay here?’ Jela asks.

‘Not at this time of the year. There are a few people when it is summer but we all keep ourselves to ourselves. It’s not good to ask questions.’

Faith is keen to knock on her family’s cabin door but I sit on the ground and tell her we should wait. After thirty minutes of no movement in or out of any of the shacks, the sun has fully
risen and the frost that made the ground crackle under our footsteps now makes our descent to the lake a perilous mixture of sliding and grabbing onto tree trunks for support.

Faith is in her element and if I hadn’t shushed her, she would be shrieking with pleasure.

The cabins back onto another area of woodland, so we dash across the trail and stay within the tree line until Faith points us to the one that is theirs. It is the largest one and I am annoyed
at my own prejudice. Because she is a Trog, I expected something run-down.

‘I have my own room at the back,’ Faith says, sounding pleased with herself. ‘It’s probably the same size as our actual house.’

There are windows that look out towards where we are but neither of us can see any movement. Ideally I wanted to see a sign that Faith’s parents are here and then make our approach. I know
that she wants to say hello and spend some time with them but the longer we stay somewhere like this instead of moving on, the more chance we have of being found.

After another ten minutes, there are still no signs of life and there is only one option to find out if anyone is in. Faith is understandably delighted as we walk around to the front of the
cabin, facing the lake, and she raps loudly on the wooden door.

My throat is dry and I find it hard to swallow as the knock echoes around us before being replaced by a serene calm. I try to picture my mother’s face as Faith reaches forward and bangs
louder on the door. Again there is silence and I see visions of my mum and Colt being led away by Kingsmen. I think about the families of the rest of our group and how I have put them all in danger
because I didn’t find a way to check if my warning message got through.

As my hands begin to shake, there is a scratching on the other side of the door. I try to stop her but it is too late as Faith says, ‘Mum, it’s me’ loudly enough that the
syllables seem to bounce around the water.

More scratching and then the door swings inwards a few centimetres.

‘Mum?’ Faith’s voice cracks as she takes a step forward and the door opens the rest of the way.

There is an instant resemblance as the woman in the doorway stares curiously at her daughter, arms hugging across her own chest. Facially, Faith and her mother are incredibly similar, but there
are also clear differences as the older woman has long dark hair and doesn’t have the same athletic body Faith does.

‘It’s me, Mum,’ Faith repeats, opening her arms.

The woman continues to stare at her, eyes wide in surprise. It is only with her expression that I realise this is the first time any Offering has ever returned to his or her parents.

‘How . . . ?’ the woman says.

It is only one word but it breaks Faith completely. Suddenly the young woman who has been so resourceful and grown-up is reduced to a girl crying in her mother’s arms. I watch her blonde
mop of hair bob up and down as she sobs, before I hear Jela next to me choking back a tear too. Before I myself crack, Faith’s mother waves us all into the cabin, locking three bolts across
the inside of the wooden door as her daughter refuses to let her go.