Insects vibrated the dry air. They seemed everywhere and nowhere to Elsa, in the branches above her head, in the reeds along the river and in the pale orange shingle at her feet. Their endless drone followed her as she limped alongside the riverbank.

The murky brown river churned down the mountainside, showing no regard for the human it had spat out. It had bruised Elsa’s body, broken her watch and soaked her clothes. It had stolen a boot and her backpack with all her supplies, but it hadn’t yet broken her spirit. She still had her knife and her resolve, although that last one was starting to waver.

Dust clouds churned high in the sky, creating billows of beige, brown and grey. When she looked up into the vast, rolling expanse, her stomach flipped and her head spun. Up became down, and down became up. Her feet no longer seemed anchored to the ground and Elsa suddenly had the sensation she was falling into the chaotic sky.

In those moments of vertigo, she clung to the walls of the rock gully. Or she crouched down and covered her eyes.

“One, two, three…”

She focused on the sound of her voice and the feel of her bare toes scrunching the riverside’s warm pebbles.

“…four, five, six…”

She focused on her chest expanding in and out with each breath and the throbbing pain in her side.

“…seven, eight, nine…”

Elsa kept counting until the sensation faded and she could walk once more.

The day grew hot and uncomfortable. Her clothes dried and her sweat dampened them again. Wind gusts blew into the gully and tossed handfuls of fine, orange dirt in her face. Her empty stomach growled in protest, reminding her she hadn’t eaten for some time.

This wasn’t how she’d imagined her first day on the surface.

For starters, Elsa had planned on being with her uncle. Their minds would have been on the adventure ahead and the profit they’d make, not on their next meal or where they were going to sleep for the night. She also would have been travelling the surface road, not walking along a river gully without exit.

For years, Elsa had had such carefully laid plans. However, once she’d met the Blood Wolves, they had vanished faster than dried Kenafi leaves in a firepit. The Blood Wolves had come to the Underground to rescue one of their own kind from the Black Guardsmen. They’d convinced Elsa and her uncle to help. This rescue had gone wrong and now her uncle was somewhere in the valley, injured. Elsa had come to find him.

She’d crawled through tiny squeezes, winding tunnels and pitch-black caves to get to the surface. She fought the guards and pushed through her fear of the dark and deep water to make it out alive. Very few people could boast such an achievement and, initially, Elsa had felt like she could do anything. These feelings of triumph had been short lived.

She was stuck.

The gully’s sides towered over her. She’d followed the left wall for most of the morning, hoping for a way out, but the gully continued without a break. The river widened, consuming the shingle beach. Elsa entered the flow, determined to push on to the next stretch of dry ground. The riverbed shifted beneath her feet and the movement pulled at her injured ribs. The fast current tugged at her ankles and surged above her knees. Elsa panicked and retreated to the shore.

Come on, Elsa, her uncle’s voice urged. Find a way out.

High above her, tall white gums crowded the gully’s edges. Roots broke through the hard soil like course hairs sprouting from a peach-coloured scalp. Elsa grabbed one of them and tested it. When she was sure it would hold, she heaved herself up. A fiery pain jolted through her side and robbed her of breath.

Elsa released the tree root. The gully seemed like an immense obstacle stretching far in either direction.

Don’t give up, Elsa, think like a Junker!

Her uncle never let Elsa wallow in self-pity, even when he was just an imagined voice in her head.

Elsa catalogued the woody debris around her and an idea formed. She dragged a tree branch from the shallows, selected a shorter, thicker branch for a baton, then took out her knife. Gritting her teeth against the pain in her side, Elsa struck the back of her blade with the wood baton and chopped the longer branch into three pegs.

Elsa hiked back up the river, to a place where tree roots ran in thick tangles down the bank, the closest one hanging just above her head. She dug with her knifepoint into the powdery soil and used a rock to hammer in the pegs. Her progress was frustratingly slow. Her injured side made her movements clumsy and every few knocks the pain became too great to ignore.

“Thank the light!” Elsa wheezed once she’d knocked in the final peg.

The staggered pegs reached halfway up the bank and ended just below the intertwined roots. Elsa pitched her weight against the first peg to check the dirt’s grip. It remained in place.

A nearby boulder gave her a boost. Elsa placed her bare foot on the closest peg. She tensed, ready for movement, but it held. She stepped onto the next one, grabbing a loose tree root to steady her balance.

More confident now, Elsa trod onto the third peg and let out a cry when it immediately started to move. She clung to the mass of tree roots and half-sobbed, half-cheered when they supported her weight. Elsa climbed.

She used a patch of tough grass, and the last of her energy, to pull her upper body over the lip of the gully. Her ribs screamed in protest and her body gave out. Elsa lay in a collapsed heap, with her legs still dangling over the edge and her face pressed into dry earth.

***

“Do you think she’s dead?”

Elsa stirred at the young girl’s voice.

“Shh!” A boy said. “She’ll hear you.”

A pause followed, long enough for Elsa to think the children had gone—or that her mind was playing tricks on her—until the girl spoke again. “We should help her.”

“No! Look at her wrist. She’s Bad Seed.”

“I’m going to do it anyway,” the girl said. “You stay here if you’re scared.”

Leaves crunched next to Elsa’s head. Small, firm hands latched onto her arms, encouraging her the rest of the way. Elsa tried to do her part, scrambling with her feet and knees, but her body was heavy with fatigue, so she only had enough strength left to roll onto her back. Dried twigs and bark dug into her side and caught in her hair. Elsa closed her eyes and took a moment to find her breath.

“This is a bad idea,” the boy called from a distance. “The Bad Seed will sully us. She’ll make us unworthy.”

“Fine,” the girl said, closer. “Run away. I don’t need your help!”

The tip of a soft, leather boot nudged her shoulder. Elsa opened her eyes. A face hovered above hers, two high cheekbones smattered with freckles. Thick, black hair hung loose over the young girl’s shoulders and her warm, brown gaze meet Elsa’s.

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“Hello.”

Elsa cleared her throat. “Hi.”

The girl peered over the edge of the gully. “That was a clever idea, making steps. Ethan thought you’d never get up here.” She straightened. “I bet him his best shirt you would do it in one go, but he just gave me a lecture on how gambling rots the soul.”

Elsa pressed her palm to her wounded side. The pressure relieved some of the pain and made it easier to talk. “You were watching me?”

“Yeah,” the girl said. “We’ve been waiting here, just in case the Guardians came this way. Do you know your face is bleeding and you only have one shoe?”

“Yes.”

“Well, as long as you know.” The girl pushed back a dark strand of hair from her face. “I’m Mina.”

“Elsa.”

“Do you need help getting up?”

“Yes.”

Mina jerked Elsa to her feet. The sting caused her to hunch over for several moments.

“There, there,” Mina gave her shoulder a gentle pat.

“Thank you,” Elsa said, once she could stand.

Mina smiled, and her cheek bones almost swallowed her eyes.

The two of them stood head-to-head, though the girl was several years younger than Elsa. She was in good health, save for a few scrapes on her arms and a tunic spoiled with dirt and muck.

Elsa broadened her gaze to take in her surroundings. “So, this is what the world looks like outside the gully.”

The trees she’d seen from the river grew thick here, their numbers multiplying up a steady incline as far as Elsa could see. Yellow grass and pale, stunted saplings sprouted in the space between these thick white trunks.

“Where’d your friend go?” Elsa asked.

Mina scowled, crinkling the fair skin between her eyes. “Back to the shelter. Don’t worry about him.”

“You live nearby?”

“Sort of,” Mina said. “Come on, I’ll take you there.”

Mina led her through the woods. Elsa scrambled along behind, her eyes trying to fix on a million points at once. The natural light dazzled her. It made uneven patterns across the ground that played with her depth perception. An impatient breeze tugged at her hair. Long, curved leaves crunched beneath her feet and released a scent that reminded her of her uncle. She felt dizzy and out of place.

Mina glanced over her shoulder and paused. “You don’t look so good.”

Elsa pulled at the collar of her shirt to loosen the pressure on her neck.

“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” Mina asked. “Ethan threw up five times on the walk here. One time, he almost got my foot.”

“No,” Elsa said. “I’m overwhelmed, that’s all.”

Mina nodded and kicked at a pile of dried leaves. “The surface is big, isn’t it?”

“Big, bright, boundless, messy, demanding, crowded…” Elsa ran out of words.

“You get used to it after a while.”

“Really? I’m not sure I will.”

Mina tugged on Elsa’s hand. “Come on, we’re almost there.” She took a step up the hill and thought better of it. “Actually, I might walk beside you, just in case you, you know…” She stopped and mimed a dry heave.

They continued until they reached a rocky outcrop at the top of the steep slope.

“This is it,” Mina announced. “Home for the moment.”

Elsa didn’t see the opening at first, then the stone seemed to part, revealing a gap that reached above Elsa’s head. She pressed her hand against the rough stone and entered. The bright light dimmed and the air cooled. The overwhelming scents and noises of the outside faded, and the smell of dust and damp took their place. Elsa’s composure returned in this familiar environment.

“I never thought I’d be so happy to be surrounded by rock.”

The tunnel led to a wide chamber. Filtered sunlight streamed in from several holes in the ceiling. A fire blazed in the middle of the space, its smoke curling upward to vent into the forest above. Wooden crates and makeshift pallets lined the walls. A few utensils lay scattered near the fire. Mina righted an upturned bowl, its gluggy contents smeared on the stone floor, then placed the spoon on top of the rim.

“Are there others here?” Elsa asked.

“They’re hiding,” Mina said. “Ethan probably told them you’re Bad Seed.”

Elsa crouched before the flames. “That doesn’t seem to bother you.”

Mina shrugged. “You’re the first person we’ve seen in days. I don’t care who you are.”

Elsa studied Mina again. Beneath a layer of dirt, her brown tunic bore a golden oak crest that shone in the firelight. “You said you were waiting for the Guardians. You’re one of the Chosen from Haven?”

Mina sat beside Elsa. “Yes.”

“And you’ve really been here for days?”

“Maybe longer,” Mina said. “We didn’t keep track in the beginning.”

Elsa wasn’t exactly sure where she was, but she knew it wasn’t anywhere near the main entrance to Haven. “How did you end up here?”

“The guards escorted us into the woods and told us to walk for a day. At first, I was worried, until we found the signs. We followed them here.”

“Signs?”

Mina nodded. “The Guardians left them for us. Carvings in the white trees.” She pulled a necklace from beneath her robe. The flat medallion at the end was engraved with Haven’s oak tree. Mina scrambled to her feet and walked to the cave wall. “See?”

She traced her fingers along the deep round grooves in the stone. Elsa rose and stepped back further to take in the rock face. An image emerged out of the stone: a great oak identical to the one on Mina’s necklace and robe. The tree took up the entire wall and some of the ceiling, its thick leafy branches spreading wide to embrace the occupants within the chamber.

“This is the symbol we found in the woods,” Mina explained. “Beneath each one, there was an arrow telling us the way to go. They led us here, to food and safety.”

Elsa caught a brown head poking out from behind a crate.

“Hello,” she said.

The head retreated.

Mina sighed. “Come out, you two. She’s not going to hurt you.”

A girl with curly blonde hair crawled from between metal drums and moved towards the fire. The other child left the safety of the crates then, also entering the light. Mina introduced them as Thom and Sophie.

Sophie regarded Elsa, one hand playing with a strand of her hair at her temple. “What happened to your face?”

Elsa touched her cheek and felt the cut. She looked at her hands and saw the red stripes decorating her palms. With the adrenaline gone, she was beginning to feel every scratch and bruise.

“It’s a long story,” Elsa answered.

Sophie moved a little closer to the fire and knelt. When Thom didn’t follow, the girl reached back and pulled the shy boy down beside her.

“What’s that around your neck?” Sophie asked.

Elsa glanced down to see the gold chain peeking from the collar of her shirt.

“A watch.”

Elsa sat and showed them the timepiece’s cracked face.

“It’s just like the Sunlight clock.” Sophie shuffled nearer. She squinted. “It’s broken.”

“It got wet,” Elsa explained.

“What’s on the back?”

Elsa showed Sophie her uncle’s artisanal mark and the tiny inscription ringing it: a gift to count each second of joy.

“What does it mean?” Sophie asked.

“It’s a message from my uncle to my parents on their wedding day.” Elsa said and dropped the watch beneath her shirt.

“Are you really Bad Seed?” Sophie asked.

Elsa nodded.

“Will you show me your tattoo?”

Thom held his breath while he waited for her to answer Sophie’s request. Elsa pushed up her jacket sleeve, so the mark was clear in the light. Thom breathed out and leant towards Elsa. Sophie slid forward so their knees were touching and took Elsa’s wrist in her hand.

“It’s not very pretty,” she whispered.

“No,” Elsa agreed.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes. I wasn’t much older than you when they gave it to me. I cried a lot.”

Thom found his voice and his words came out in a rush. “My mother told me when you become Bad Seed your teeth fall out and your hair goes grey.”

She showed them her teeth to prove otherwise.

Elsa felt a light touch on her wrist. She looked down to find Sophie tracing the outline of her tattoo. The girl opened Elsa’s hand and touched the three scars on her palm. “What do they mean? Are they because you’re Bad Seed?”

As gently as she could, Elsa removed the girl’s hand from her own and closed her palm, hiding the marks.

“They’re a promise,” she said. “A special one.”

Sophie slid back, giving her some room. “A secret?”

Elsa nodded.

“Are you coming with us to the Farm?” Thom asked.

There was a snort from the shadows and a voice said, “Of course not.”

A pale redheaded boy stepped from behind another stack of crates. “The Farm is just for the Chosen. When the Guardians get here, they’re going to punish her and us too.”

“We could lie,” Thom said. “We could cover her mark.”

Ethan shook his head. “They’ll know. The Guardians see everything.”

He turned to Elsa and shooed her towards the door. “You’re not one of us. Go away before you ruin everything.”

Mina scowled. “You’re not the Keeper, Ethan. You can’t tell anyone what to do.”

“It’s wrong,” Ethan insisted, his voice rising. “She shouldn’t be here. The Guardians won’t like it and they won’t take us.”

“I don’t care.” Sophie’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t want to go with them anyway.”

Thom sniffed beside Elsa.

“Stop it!” Ethan shouted at them. “Stop crying. This is our reward. We’ve been waiting for this our entire lives. You’re all ungrateful. You don’t deserve this gift!”

Elsa noticed tears were falling fast down his cheeks.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” Elsa said.

Ethan scrubbed at his face. “I’m not afraid! This is all your fault. You’re making them question their path, turning them rotten. I won’t let you do it to me. I’m strong and worthy. You stay away from me.”

He fled down the tunnel and back into the woods.