Darren

Never before had anything like it happened in Prospera. Four children were missing; three of them had gone missing on the same night. Having close friendships with each other, Kevin, Lisa, Miranda and Hannah’s parents were able to prevent a mass outbreak of panic. It also helped that Hannah’s mother was the person most of the people had dealt with when they’d had dealings with the governing authorities; that her child was one of those that had gone missing dispelled any thoughts about this being a sinister act on the part of the governing authorities.

Hannah’s mother took the lead in handling the crisis, and for someone whose child was missing her approach to her task was incredibly controlled and purposeful. Hannah and the others had taken them completely by surprise. News of their disappearance spread through the village before the governing authorities could take steps to mitigate its impact on the population. With few options available to her, Hannah’s mother opted for the most direct route. She convened a town meeting at the open air auditorium by the lake and informed everyone of what was going on.

“Thank you all for coming,” she stood in the centre of the stage and began, “I’ve called you all here today to provide you with clarity about the news you’ve no doubt all heard by now. Three children have gone missing: Lisa, Miranda and my daughter Hannah. We don’t believe that anything foreign and malicious entered the village and took them away or did something to them. What we believe is that they’ve run away. The forest beyond Guardian Mountain is the likeliest place they’d be; it’s a dangerous place but we are going to be sending search parties that are well equipped to defend themselves to look for them. There is no reason for any of you to fear for you or your children’s safety or to be concerned that there is something sinister going on here that members of the Committees are behind. We are going to be doing everything in our power to bring these children back and to bring them back before any harm comes to them in the forest. Thank you.”

Her address to all three thousand adult members of the village appeared at first glance to have done a lot to assuage the anxiety of the townspeople, as a first step it was well orchestrated and executed. Her next step was the one that I had been waiting for since the previous night when Hannah, Lisa and Miranda had fled Prospera with Kevin. As the last remaining member of our group I was naturally the first person they’d turn to in their search for answers. I was summoned to Hannah’s mother’s office in the Central Administration Building. She was adversarial and immediately established an interrogatory atmosphere in the room; she knew that there were things I knew that would be of high value to her and she didn’t have any time to waste finessing them out of me.

“Darren, where are they? And don’t bother telling me that you don’t know.”

“They left with Kevin.”

I didn’t feel confident enough in my ability to be convincingly mendacious to lie to her; sitting behind her desk with her elbows up on the desk looking piercingly into my eyes she was very imposing and intimidating.

“Kevin’s still alive?”

“Yes, he’s been sleeping in the forest and sneaking in and out of the village to steal fruit.”

“Did they say where they were going?”

“They said they were going to try and reach the outside world.”

“Through the forest?”

“Yes.”

“Did they go the same way they went the last time?”

Since the night that Kevin and the others had gone into the forest he had believed that they had been seen and that for some reason the governing authorities had chosen not to pursue action against them. I had made a grave mistake in allowing Hannah’s mother to disarm me with her authoritative posture. I couldn’t trust her; I couldn’t trust any of them not to exact retribution on my friends for the trouble they’d caused. I needed to protect them, to do everything I could to obstruct the governing authorities’ efforts to find them.

“Darren, did they go the same way they went the last time?”

“Yes,” I lied, hoping to send them in the wrong direction and keep my friends out of their clutches.

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“What time did they leave?”

“Before midnight.”

“Which means that if they walked through the night they’d be quite far by now,” she said to herself, “Thank you Darren, that’ll be all for now.”

Their response was quick; within an hour of leaving Hannah’s mother’s office there was a crowd gathered at the dock to watch three horses being loaded onto the fishing boat. Three men would be riding into the forest to search for Kevin and the others; Hannah’s father was one of them. Just as they were about to depart, Hannah’s mother arrived and walked onto the dock to thank them for what they were doing and to bid them farewell.

“Bring her back,” I heard her saying to her husband after they’d hugged.

They rowed out of the cove and after rounding the cliffs were out of sight; with nothing left to do but wait for their return the crowd that had gathered quickly dispersed. The more I thought about the scene at the dock between Hannah’s mother and father and about the decision to send just three men deep into the forest to look for Kevin, Hannah, Lisa and Miranda the more flaws I saw in Hannah’s mother’s handling of the situation. Wouldn’t the citizens of Prospera start to wonder if the forest was really as dangerous as they’d always been told it was if only three men on horseback were being sent into it to look for Kevin and the others? And wouldn’t they wonder if the urgent, unprecedented response was due to one of the missing children being the daughter of someone important?

Hannah’s mother wasn’t acting in her capacity as Deputy Head of the Education Committee and a Prospera prefect. She was acting as a mother, taking actions that were emotional and irrational, that had the capacity to undermine everything that people believed about Prospera. My opinion of her softened after seeing all of this; what she was doing—risking everything for the sake of bringing her daughter back safe and alive—was immensely admirable.

Miranda

Kevin was careful about not asking too much of us; what Lisa had said to him that first day about the need for us to conserve energy had apparently been accepted by him. On the second day of our journey we walked until mid-afternoon when we found another cave to sleep in. Saving energy by walking slower and not for too long was helping us to keep our appetites in check which helped us conserve our food provisions. We were getting by on water and the apples, and on that second night we had a little bit of the meat. Still, though, as hard as we were working to conserve our energy and thus our bodies’ demand for sustenance, our food situation was rapidly becoming alarming. We’d gone through more than half of the apples and the remainder of the meat would have to be eaten soon before it spoiled. We were all concerned about what we were going to do when our food ran out, none of us more so than Kevin. He was constantly on the lookout for animals and was on occasion able to spot a deer, only for it to gallop away the second it saw him, too fast for Kevin to even bother chasing after it. His frustration at not being able to successfully secure us more food was growing increasingly apparent. Once, after trying in vain to run after a deer, he threw the hatchet he was planning on using to kill it forcefully down to the ground. The only one of us who could have really done something to relieve Kevin’s frustration was Hannah, but even she was too unsure of how Kevin would respond to her to reach out to him in some way. On the morning of the fourth day we ate the little of the meat that was left because it was starting to smell a little foul, and we only had eleven apples left. Contributing to our collective angst was our anger at ourselves for not packing any toilet paper; our failure to do so was responsible for some very unpleasant moments.

For the previous two days, as we’d watched our food provisions rapidly dwindle, Lisa had been eating less and encouraging me to eat more. I didn’t argue with her, thinking that she was offering to give me food from her share because her body was so much stronger than mine and didn’t need as much sustenance, a theory that would be proven horribly wrong when Lisa started having trouble moving and confessed to having been experiencing stomach pains for a day. We had only been walking for a couple of hours that fourth morning when we had to stop and sit Lisa down against a tree and tend to her.

“She needs food, she’s been giving away too much of hers these past two days; here, eat,” Kevin said, placing the bag of apples next to her.

Lisa ate four of them and drank some water, reducing our supply of apples from eleven to a measly seven. The time had come for us to take immediate action to secure more food; Kevin felt the exigent need to address this more than the rest of us did.

“You two stay here with her,” he said to me and Hannah, arming himself with the knife, “I’m going to find food and I’m not coming back until I do.”

“Let me come with you,” Hannah quickly stood up from Lisa’s side and said to him.

“No, if something happens to me you three are going to need each other; you’d better stay.”

“I’ve been thinking about something the past couple of days, a strategy for catching one of the deer. Every time you’ve approached one it’s run off in the opposite direction; what if I were to approach one so that it runs off in the direction where you’ll be waiting for it? Don’t you think that’s worth a try?”

Kevin was silent for a moment as he considered Hannah’s idea, weighing it against the possibility of something happening to the both of them and me and Lisa being left out in the forest all by ourselves.

“That’s not a bad idea she’s got, it’s worth giving it a try,” Lisa said to Kevin.

Kevin and Lisa were usually in agreement, and this time was no different. He told Hannah to join him and they went off hunting together.