For eight hundred years we serfs have lived on this planet. Eight hundred years of being ruled over by the daughters of the Eternal Queen Sarana. Eight hundred years trapped, beneath her hollow trees.
– excerpt from A Free Serf’s History
Written 842 years after Crash Landing
Chapter 1:
“You’ve got to get her out of here,” Vek said.
Sukren pulled a gauze bandage out of his med-kit. He tore it in two, tossing the shorter piece back into the kit. He hadn't seen Vek in ages, and based on what he was hearing, Sukren wished he wasn't seeing him now. “Is that why you’re here? Did Lady Nari send you?”
Sunlight flickered around and through the edges of the curtain-door hanging before Sukren. He watched Vek nod. Cursing silently, he asked, “Is someone coming? When?”
“First thing tomorrow. Ow!”
“Sorry, sorry.” Without windows, without electricity, grandmother huts were hard to see in. Sukren could barely make out Vek lying on his side, the boy’s injured arm half off the straw mat that was the only furniture inside the hut. “Let me give you more painkiller.”
Sukren wanted to focus on Vek’s injury, wanted to pretend Vek hadn’t said what he’d just said. But Vek wouldn’t let him. “No. I’m fine. But you – you’re not. You have to get out of here. Have to get her out of here. They’re coming tomorrow. Right when the greenhouse gate opens.”
Sukren swallowed. It was time to bite down, and bite down hard. Ten years he’d spent hiding her in this greenhouse village, and now, just like that, they had to leave it? He’d thought he’d get more time, he’d thought he’d get at least a few more years, rock-god, was it all truly over?
No, no, stop. Now was not the time to mourn. Now was the time to act. With practiced hands, Sukren bound Vek’s wound and tried to think. Tomorrow, they had to be out of the village by tomorrow, but that meant they had to leave tonight before the gate closed. Once the portcullis was lowered, it wouldn’t come up again until morning. That meant they had to leave now.
“Who is coming?” he asked quickly. “And how many?”
“I don’t know. Soldiers, that’s all I was told. Lady Ki’s soldiers, I think.”
Suddenly the mud-walled hut around Sukren felt like a tomb. He stood, stooping just in time to avoid banging his head against the ceiling.
“Wait – I’m coming with you!”
“You’re not going anywhere with that arm.” Despite his racing heart, a smile touched Sukren’s lips. “You really have to learn how to stop getting stabbed. I’m not always going to be there to patch you up afterwards.”
“Damn Eenta soldiers –”
“You need to stay here and recover. The villagers will pretend you’re one of their own. They won’t betray you.”
“I want to come with you.”
Vek said it softly, earnestly. For once he actually sounded his age. What was he, fourteen, fifteen? Sukren couldn’t remember.
“I’m sorry,” Sukren replied. He didn’t know what else to say. Vek was like this, always expressing a vulnerability that never failed to make Sukren uncomfortable. “You’ll – you’ll be safe here.”
Vek was quiet. Sukren nodded to him, then reached out and drew the curtain-door open. Outside the grandmother hut the sunlight slanted blue through the greenhouse walls. The sense of urgency that had gripped him within the hut began pounding inside him. Soldiers were coming – he had to get going – they had to leave –
“Mayah,” he called out. He could see her playing out by the edge of the rice field. “Mayah, come here. We have to – I have something I need to tell you.”
***
Mayah felt bad. She hadn’t meant to gossip with Beia about Ajante’s crush on Sukren. But Beia had promised she and Mayah would be best friends forever if Mayah told her why Ajante kept following Sukren around everywhere, and Mayah couldn’t help it, she wanted so badly to be best friends forever with Beia!
But then again, Mayah wanted to be best friends forever with Ajante too. And you didn’t gossip about the people you wanted to be best friends forever with. You just didn’t. Even if Beia had started it, Mayah shouldn’t have joined in.
Mayah sighed and sat down at the edge of the rice field. She didn’t put her feet into it or anything, she was old enough – almost eleven years old! – to know not to do that. Besides, the water was all muddy and yucky. The grownups had finished transplanting the last of the seedlings just yesterday. Mayah had helped the other kids draw water from the greenhouse walls for the grownups to drink while they worked.
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But what did that matter? It wasn’t like it made up for Mayah sharing Ajante’s secret. Every kid in the greenhouse village helped on transplant days, that was normal.
Sighing again, Mayah leaned her scarf-covered head against the greenhouse wall behind her. The wall was a pretty blue against the green of her scarf. Which she liked because blue was her favorite color. That was because it was Sukren’s favorite color, too. “If we have to live in a box, might as well be a blue box,” Sukren had joked with her once. Mayah giggled, thinking about it. The greenhouse village wasn’t a box. It was too big for that! All the grandmother huts, and the children’s group home, and the rice fields, and the cookfires fit inside the greenhouse. That was why they called it a greenhouse village; it held a whole village. No box could do that.
Sukren was always so funny. And he was brave, too, and smart. He knew everything, even things the village head didn’t know. Like how to make sick people better, or how many greenhouse villages there were in the bio-dome, or when exactly the Crash Landing had happened (eight hundred and sixty-seven years ago!). Come to think of it, it wasn’t that surprising that Ajante liked Sukren. Although Mayah still thought it was a little gross. Sukren was her, well, not her brother exactly, and not her father exactly, either, more like kind of both. Her guardian. That was what Sukren told her to tell the other children, anyway.
Thinking of Sukren made Mayah sigh again. Three sighs in a row, Sukren would call her dra-ma-tic, drawing out the word to make Mayah laugh, but then he’d ask her what was wrong, and she’d have to tell him about Ajante. No, she didn’t have to. She wanted to. It always bothered her when she did something wrong. And gossiping about Ajante was wrong.
Mayah got up. Dusting off her bottom with her hands, then, keeping close to the blue wall so she wouldn’t fall into the rice field, Mayah started to head back to the huts and cookfires on the other side of the greenhouse.
“Mayah! Mayah come here! We have to – I have something I need to tell you!”
Oh, Sukren was calling her! Good, he was by the greenhouse wall too, away from all the other villagers standing around the cookfires. Mayah didn’t want to confess in front of everyone.
“Listen, Mayah, I’ve got – come this way.”
He led her to a grandmother hut, one along the path. Half the huts were on one side of the path, and the other half, on the other. The path led all the way to the greenhouse gate, not that Mayah left the greenhouse that often. Which was normal for a villager. What she didn’t understand was why they were going into a grandmother hut. Sukren had left the curtain-door open so it wasn’t too dark, but still, grandmother huts were for sleeping. Why were they in one now? And why did Sukren have a worry-worm look on his face?
“Sukren?” she asked tentatively. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to leave the village.”
Something in Sukren’s voice made Mayah draw closer to him. She was glad when he knelt and put his arm around her. Clinging to his hand, she repeated his words. “We have to leave the village?”
“That’s right.”
“But why?”
Mayah didn’t get it. Leave the village and go where? Outside? Outside was all plastos plant fields, nobody could live there!
“Some bad people are coming.”
“Bad people?”
Sukren squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe from them.”
Normally Mayah liked hearing Sukren say things like that. This time, though, was different. If she had to leave all her friends and go somewhere else – where? – she wanted to know why. She pulled away from Sukren so she could see his face. “But I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
She watched as Sukren took in a tight breath. “You know how this is a Chenta village, how everyone in it is a Chenta serf, right?” Mayah nodded. “Well, the bad people coming are soldiers, Eenta soldiers.”
A sudden pall fell on Mayah. Eenta soldiers. She’d heard stories about them before. Scary stories. From the look in Sukren’s eyes, he’d heard them too.
“But what about my friends?” she whispered.
“They’ll be okay. As long as we get out of here now.”
That didn’t make much sense to Mayah. Why would Mayah and Sukren leaving the village make the village safer? Sukren was acting like the soldiers were coming after them, or something.
When Sukren stood and gestured for her to follow him, she frowned, hesitating. But then he took her hand and tugged her out of the grandmother hut. He led her down the path towards the gate – quickly, as if they were sneaking out. Mayah kept glancing back. Everyone else was eating dinner over the cookfires, and it smelled good, really good.
They were crossing under the portcullis spikes when Mayah felt a sudden bout of panic. Was this really it? They were leaving? What about her friends? Couldn’t she at least say goodbye?
“Come on!”
“But –”
“We don’t have time.”
“Okay,” Mayah whispered. She gave one last look down the path running through the mud huts of the greenhouse village and glanced at the see-through blue walls stretching over it all. When Sukren called for her again, she turned and ran towards him. He was already on one of the ash-paths that led through the plastos plant fields.
“This way, quick, quick.”
Mayah hurried after Sukren. He didn’t say anything to her, which made her feel like a worry-worm herself. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“To the castle.”
They were going to the castle? Where the Rajas lived?
Why?