Chapter 47:
They left the woods and made their way through the line of greenhouse villages. Blue-tinted ceilings and walls gave way to purple, then red, then went back to blue and once more to purple. Mayah was glad it was late at night. These villages they were crossing through were Eenta ones.
Halfway through the greenhouse next to the shelterbelt, Vek stumbled, and shrugged off Mayah’s grip. He sank to the ground amidst purple-lit pumpkins. Mayah knelt beside him. She felt numb, inside and out. But then her stomach growled. It had been several hours since her last food bar, and even longer since she had had an actual meal.
“Let’s eat,” she lisped.
“No,” Vek said. “You can’t eat yet. Your tongue is still numb, isn’t it?” Mayah nodded. “If you eat you might start chewing it off. You won’t know because you won’t feel it.”
He spoke matter-of-factly, as if discussing the best way out of the greenhouse. Turn left, around the patch of ripening zucchini. No, no, don’t go down that row of squash. Head straight, instead.
“I’ll smash a food bar for you and put it into a water bulb to make it runny enough to swallow.”
“How much water?”
Vek shrugged. “I always crumble the bar first then put it into the water bulb a little at a time, until it looks right.”
Always.
Mayah knew she was shaking, but she couldn’t help herself. She saw in her mind’s eye the serf prod coming down again, felt it jab against the back of her mouth. Her frame trembled – her left hand clenched into a fist – but only for a few seconds. It took too much effort for her strained muscles, still working the electricity out, to remain tense.
Vek touched her shoulder. “Mayah?”
Their eyes met.
Mayah stiffened, the jolt of recognition immobilizing her as much as the serf prod had. Face to face, she and Vek were close enough for her to see his eyes, to see them probing, hoping, expecting.
She knew that look. She knew that look.
“I’ve seen you before.” Her voice sounded strange in her own ears. “I know you.”
A crooked smile touched Vek’s lips. Mayah tried to name the sensation searing through her, and realized it was shame.
“You were there that night I came into the castle,” she whispered. “You were with Sukren. I remember you. You bowed to me.”
It was the same greenhouse. The same vegetables pushing their way through the dirt. Their leaves fell in exactly the same way; their purple coloring hadn’t changed. And yet it was like the light had reflected on itself. As if another pair of glasses had slipped over Mayah’s eyes, only for Mayah to realize that the lenses in her original pair had been cracked, her sight distorted all this time.
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This is Rajas rule, her new sight said. This is Rajas rule. You not even remembering Vek. You forgetting his existence as soon as he was out of sight because he wasn’t important, because he wasn’t a Rajas. It’s the same as the Eenta jamming his serf prod into your mouth, into forcing you and Vek to take a detour just because he can. This is Rajas rule, and it is not something you can fight. It is you.
Oh Sarana! Mayah’s heart cried out. It is my fault! It is!
How many times had Mayah been deemed valueless? Didn’t she know what that felt like? Of course she did. She just hadn’t known – no, hadn’t cared – that serfs would feel the same way. Her own desperate need to belong had crowded everything else out.
A sob burst from her lips. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, now weeping, desperately afraid that Vek would not forgive her. She covered her face with her hands. “I was wrong. I’m sorry. I… I don’t want to be that way anymore.”
“You don’t have to be.”
His voice was achingly earnest. Crying even harder, Mayah thought about how afraid she had been about one day being surrounded by Rajas screaming at her for being impure. She thought about how she’d sought escape through drowning herself in the library’s books. She thought about how utterly rejected she’d felt for two long years.
She thought about how much worse the serfs had suffered.
Sobs wracked her body. When Vek reached out and touched her shoulder again, it took her a moment to lift her tear-stained face.
“I see now,” Mayah whispered. She looked at Vek, his face flushed with fever, and her heart ached. “I see now, I understand why we need the Free Serfs. It’s not right. That’s what the Free Serfs mean – the end of this kind of thing. It means…”
She looked at Vek, and he smiled at her, a merciful, welcoming smile. Barely able to comprehend his grace, and yet starving for it, Mayah wanted to cry again. Suddenly she was grateful that a serf prod had been jammed into her mouth, that the electricity was still ravaging her body. Now Mayah had at least some claim on the hurt of the Chenta, some understanding of their hope in the Free Serfs.
Vek finished her sentence, eagerness creeping into his voice. “It means we’ll be free. It means we won’t be taken from our own homes.”
“It means no more sacrifices in the Temple,” Mayah whispered. Then her thoughts turned towards Sukren. “It means no more disappearances,” she added fiercely.
All at once, she caught her breath, and cried out. “Vek, that’s why Sukren couldn’t tell me anything! Because of Rajas rule! Because of the consequences of breaking Rajas rule!”
The paradigm had clicked into place. And how clear it was! Rajas rule was the problem, and the Free Serfs the solution. Her face glowing with excitement, a weight somehow shed, Mayah met Vek’s eyes.
They were shining.
“It means we won’t be rejected,” Mayah breathed, while at the same time, Vek said, “It means… it means nobody… nobody will hit anyone, anymore.”
“Oh, Vek!”
Mayah reached out to take Vek by the hand, the sharp sweetness in her heart rendering her speechless. But it didn’t matter that she had no more words to give. It was enough to feel his fingers return her grasp, and to smile as a hint of Vek’s old, confident grin played on his lips.