My secret was bubbling that day. It was one of the quarterly birthdays, and I hoped a walk along Birthing Shore before the arrival of the newborns would calm my secret down. This secret followed me wherever I went. Somedays, it was as light as our ever-floating fog, and others, it was as heavy as a beating. When I collected moss along the shore, or walked the grueling path to deliver burlap bags to and from the boiler, the weight of the secret pressed like a splinter along each step. Somedays, I felt so tempted to tell someone, it was as if my chest could burst. But the secret was dangerous.
There was no one I could trust with the secret if I had decided to share it. I’d seen what destruction trust could bring, and not even I was stupid enough to consider that. Still, at the peak of my discomfort, I considered: What might life be like to trust? Just enough to share a secret? To walk freely without this chronic, stabbing pain?
I sat on one of the large rocks a distance from the shore, but I was close enough to note the shades of gray between the pebbly sand and the blackened waters. If I chose to, I could look at the trees, the cursed ones near the coast that weren’t safe to burn.
I never did, no matter how much I wanted to.
Most were pale in K’mere, as the boys who were born from the sea were so white that they almost appeared to glow. Our paleness was easy to forget, as every face was covered in some sort of grime. Even if one could find time to bathe, our skin was chronically tinted with the gray pigment of soot, and the murky waters at best only lightened our skin a few shades.
Not that looks mattered much in K’mere, as the general darkness made most struggle to see. The only light that emanated near the ocean was from the cracks in the ground, and it changed colors: sixteen hours it glowed green, our morning, and eight hours it glowed purple, our night. I thought I had green and purple veins on my wrists, but it was hard to tell. I could always check the newborns when we helped deliver them. If I had to guess, the ground was its own body with blood, just like mine—except of course, their blood glowed.
The boys born at sea though, they came from clean waters, far out in the harbor. Their skin was not chronically stained. I made a promise to myself that if I knew I were to die, I would swim out, and see if the clean waters would be clean enough to cleanse me. Maybe that’s why I wanted to share my secret, since it would put a price on my head, and I’d have an excuse to do instead of dream. The ocean was a dangerous thing, many of the newborns were eaten by the tentacles that sprang from its waters before they got anywhere near the shore. Others drowned, too weak to swim along the currents. To swim from the ocean was just fine, the guards never shot the newborns. But to swim far out was dangerous, and not because of the tentacles. Should anyone try to swim away, to escape the island of K’mere, they were to be caught, tortured, and slaughtered by the Royal Guard.
Life was torture in K’mere, but there was no life to be found in the torture methods of the guards. I thought they didn’t have faces, but I learned recently that they were fae like the rest of us. They wore something called a uniform, which is a type of protective clothing. We had loin cloths in K’mere, but the metal woven fabrics of the guards were so different, I didn’t think of it as a similar item.
Luckily enough, it’s rare that we interact with the Royal Guards. Even the dumbest among us learn and keep to the simplest of rules:
Do not leave K’mere.
Do not use an established currency outside of Crowns.
Do not claim an identity outside of your own.
Kill anything from the forest.
It’s simple enough. Yet, my secret, my crime, remains.
I heard the sliding of stones behind me and jumped.
It was Muck and Soot. “Hello Ash,” they both whispered in unison. We usually met here before helping deliver the births. This was the type of job that every underling in our crew had to participate in. I was so out of my mind with the fear from my secret, that I had completely forgotten.
They called me Ash because in my youth, I would collect it and paint pictures on light colored stones. I made tokens for games; I created a lot of games in my head. If I had the choice, I would design them for the rest of my days. But no one knew of this dream. Knowledge was as useful as currency in K’mere. All they knew about me was that I was Ash.
The young boys all had nothing names like I did, and we could only get new ones if they were strong enough to survive nine stormy seasons. Many of the boys were friends, but I’d been lucky enough to avoid friendships. In K’mere, there was very little to go around, and friends were hard to keep when it was everyone out for themselves.
I kept a few acquaintances, notably Muck and Soot. Most of the fae on K’mere were elven, like I was, but Muck and Soot were the only ones of their kind. The elders called them “Naga.” They had snake bodies, and though I was too shy to ask how it worked, they shared communication mentally somehow. The only way to tell them apart was that Soot had a black scales and Muck had white–well, it looked more gray given his filth. To call them friends was wrong. Friends betrayed each other. Friends tattled on each other for food or coal to burn during the stormy season. Muck and Soot, from the day they slithered out of the Nobody Sea, were inseparable. Should one die, I think the other would follow soon after.
“Hello,” I said gently, in an attempt to make up for my reaction. “It’s a rough birthday,” I said conversationally, and gestured to the storm blooming in the distance.
They nodded, both of their neon-yellow, slitted pupils darted to the sky. “We should make our way to the shore. Typhus is bringing loin cloths for the newborns.”
I blinked at the name. “Typhus.” I stated it like a question, but it was not exactly a question. That would have been outrageous.
They looked at me blankly—it was always so hard to read what those two were thinking. Maybe that was one of the reasons a friendship never quite grew between us. “Naudir is dead. Killed by the guards today for using seashells as currency.”
A ringing started in my ears, and my stomach rolled. I think I asked them to repeat what they said. I think they did, because the ringing got louder.
I had a complicated relationship with Naudir. He was a caretaker, a man who took in newborns. There were many crews among K’mere, and each had a few caretakers.. I was lucky to find Naudir in the first place. There were only so many crews looking for new members, and most of the caretakers were corrupt and cruel. But if there weren’t enough caretakers to handle the children that survived the birth, the scrawniest or weakest would be eaten, sold into the sex trade, or harvested for their organs. For some reason, despite my pathetic frame, Naudir took me in.
He was a hard man, and he beat, scolded, humiliated, and made examples of everyone under his care, including me. He made sure no one was too hungry, and should someone get too sick for medicine, he would euthanize them. He didn’t tolerate rape or unwarranted assault, which was more than many caretakers before him could say. I didn’t know the word for love at the time, but if I did hold love for anyone, it was probably Naudir.
And besides… I knew something about him the others didn't. I know what he sacrificed to keep us safe.
But that was an ugly secret, one I had no desire to tell.
I swallowed my grief. Naudir wouldn’t want me to cry for him. Naudir was forty stormy seasons—one of the oldest among us. Naudir was probably living on borrowed time. But how could he die in such a way? Currency? That was a stupid rule no one ever broke, because why in the bitter winds would someone even want to? He was too smart to go out for such a stupid reason. Traitor tears fell down my cheeks, and I wiped them away. I wanted to ask them why he would do something so stupid, but questions were taboo.
I wish sometimes that I had a simple mind. A mind like Grime. Grime was an animal of a faery. He had a mind that never wondered or imagined, a mind that simply thought and did.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I miss him, too.” Soot whispered, as if admitting his own secret. Muck didn’t move his gaze, which now settled on the ground. His hands, though, dusted with scaly skin, rested a bundle of white, wiry hair on the rock I had sat on. Naudir’s hair.
I grabbed the hair and tucked it into a pocket on the hip of my loin cloth. “Thank you.” It was so rare that I could say those words, and they didn’t feel like enough.
We walked to the shore, the whole time my secret bumbled around. Pain made secrets harder to keep, it seemed. Soot shared his secret. It wasn’t a deadly one like mine, but he trusted me enough to say it. Part of me wanted to remember a non-deadly secret, just so I could get the relief of being able to share one at all.
I distracted myself with a new threat at hand. I was still a child, only sixteen years old. My secret rattled again. The rest of the boys my age had facial hair, and some managed defined muscles on their torsos or arms. But I’d always been lean—and my lack of body fat made what muscle I did have look pitiful. I was born slightly smaller than the rest—my head barely came to the chests of the grown males, while some newborns came to their chin. Luckily, I’d grown quite tall in the past stormy season, and I held hope that my frame would fill out with enough time and decent meals. That was of course, if I lasted to nineteen.
After nineteen, I would be recognized as an adult, and I could earn my own income and actually buy enough food to eat. Rations were limited, but it seemed that I needed more than the rest. At my current age, I was still under the need of a caretaker, as no one would do business with me otherwise. I needed to impress Typhus. The knowledge Muck and Soot shared was new, and getting access to it earlier than most others was a gift. I mentally noted to pay them back whenever I could.
Typhus though, could be a problem. Wishing never did me many favors, but I wished Typhus wasn’t cruel. I briefly remembered how some of the elders remarked that their caretakers hurt them, sold their bodies for use, whether it was for the pleasure of someone else, or their body parts for food. Too many men walked around with missing limbs for that to be a lie. And red meat smells different than fish when cooked—and one of the first lessons I learned was to avoid the parts of K’mere with delicious smoke coming from it.
Typhus didn’t look like how I expected him to. His skin was…very similar and very different. I’d only seen skin like that once. He had brown dots all over his face, freckles, and his skin was warm-looking, like yellow fire had kissed it. And he wasn’t covered in grime, at least, not to the degree that the rest of us were.
This was the skin of an outsider. Skin from someone who didn’t live on the Metal Continent.
“His…skin.” Muck wondered. I looked over to see Muck and Soot tilting their heads, as if they were trying to explain the sight.
I opened my mouth to explain, but soon after, hesitated. We were all raised by Naudir, who beat you if you asked questions. He expected you to pay attention in order to find answers. Because I could never question, sometimes the information I learned never had the opportunity to be clarified. But I owed them a favor, even a small one.
“From what I know, those dots are freckles.”
“Dots… I can only see his coloring from here,” Much admitted. They slithered closer, and I paced behind them. A few boys from our crew were already crowding Typhus, all with confused looks. I imagined that many were just about to find out that Naudir was dead, and that this was our new guardian.
“Ah yes, I see them now,” Muck nodded. “Like our scales, just dots.”
“No,” I corrected. “Those dots—something called ‘sunkissing’ does it.”
They looked at me blankly.
“I’ll tell you, just promise not to share how I know this.” I felt giddy now that I remembered this secret. My other one was so heavy, I nearly forgot about this one. This was also a spectacular opportunity—should they betray this small promise, it wouldn’t be deadly, but I would know not to trust them anymore than I already did. But what if they kept their promise? Would I be pushed to trust them more? How far along this rickety bridge did I want to walk across?
“Alright,” they both agreed.
“I was watching some guards by the docks while I was collecting moss,” I started. It was a tiny lie. I was collecting pearls from underneath one of the guard’s docks. Pearls were rare and worth a lot of resources. I wondered why crabs had those giant claws if they just ate moss all day, and discovered that they didn’t. My study of the crab revealed that they cracked open and ate oysters. A large amount of crabs lived along the docs, and pearls were abundant there. I didn’t want Muck and Soot to know, though. We were acquaintances, but I needed to keep my main source of income to myself. “One of the guards fell in the sand, and they took off their face covering.”
“Helmets,” Soot corrected. “They call the metal on their heads a helmet.”
I nodded, feeling a little silly, as I thought that may have been new information to them. “Well, when they did, the other guard made fun of him for his ‘freckles.’ The freckled guard said he would willingly gain all the freckles in the world if he was lucky enough to get sun kissed again.”
“Maybe sun kissing is a different sort of kissing,” Muck mused. “I saw Aaron and Raenor kissing each other all the time. They left red marks on each other constantly.”
Soot and I nodded. Aaron died last stormy season, and Raenor starved himself to death soon after. But they were all smiles and red welts when they were together.
I looked towards the group, and clearly the news of Naudir’s death spread. Some were crying, others were rolling their eyes, or making fun at the teary boys. Death didn’t hit the older boys so hard, and I felt shame once again for having cried. I was an older boy; I should have kept it together.
I looked out to the Nothing Sea, and I could see the newborns coming towards the shore. I waded into the water with Muck, Soot, and a few of the other boys.
To my horror, I saw Grime walking right next to me. Both of our eyes locked on each other's, and his vile, yellow teeth shined in a smile that did not touch his beady, black eyes.
Grime had it out for me since I first met him. He tried to eat me. I was the weakest boy, with the fewest social connections. It was my first year, and Grime hadn’t saved enough food and resources for the stormy season. “No one is going to miss you,” he told me. He jumped me while I was going to the bathroom in the night. I only survived because I was lucky. A rock, which just so happened to have a sharp edge, greeted my palm when I was crawling on my back away from him. I lunged for him, and he slipped. There was so much blood, but I managed to get away as quickly as I could. Once everyone woke up, it was easy to see what happened. The scar I left along the middle half of his face solved and started a lot of problems for me.
I was the smallest, but no longer was I treated like the weakest. It was true that I wouldn’t be missed, but I was also too dangerous to eat, as I had defeated the biggest boy. However, Grime was vindictive. He was social, and made friends quickly. He also tried many times to get me back over the seasons, but his poorly knitted social groups fell apart too quickly for him to be successful.
I figured in the past two stormy seasons, our relationship had relaxed into a cold dislike. That smile of his though, whenever I saw it, reminded me that this feud was only over for one of us.
I smiled back, despite the fact that his venomous grin made me want to hide.
I was grateful for a cut off scream, which broke both of our concentrations. The newborns were frantically swimming from the sea, and we all waded out to grab them, and bring them to shore. Typhus was already passing loin cloths to some of the boys who made it to shore, and the diligence he displayed gave me hope that maybe he wouldn’t be so horrible.
The boy I happened to help was chubbier than the rest, which I hoped would serve him well in the stormy seasons to come. It took twelve years for the sea to grow each boy, and it fed some more than others. The boy I helped flailed his limbs, and he carried the same disorientation and fear the rest of them did. They always asked the same things: “Who are you? Who am I? How did I get here? Where am I?” These questions were all quite normal, and were muttered by all the newborns. Our job was to answer their questions calmly, and then rub their legs when we got to shore, to encourage enough blood flow so that they could walk.
I wanted to tell them that the only time they could ask questions was here and now. These first few questions were forgiven, and then it was standard to punish questions with beatings. But I didn’t say anything; I thought some lessons should be earned, not given. I remember every beating I’ve ever had—but not every shred of wisdom, assuming I could even understand the kernel of value within it.
I did the best I could; I repeated the lines that everyone else did.
“It’s ok, you’ve just been born. Of course you don’t know who you are. You came here from the sea. We are in K’mere. Your legs hurt from the cold water, we’ll fix it. We’ve all been where you are now.”
Except, that was a lie. That was my lie. My secret.
I didn’t come from the water. I came from the ground, from the forest. I clawed my way out of the dirt, and my first meal was suckling the blood from my splintered fingers. I saw the boys being born, how they splashed in an instant onto the surface of the water. I heard someone in the forest, and in my desperation, I jumped into the sea and flailed my way to the shore with the rest of them. Little did I know that had I crawled the perimeter a few extra feet, or stalled for a few extra minutes, I would have been exterminated by the guards that patrolled the woods.
Do not claim an identity outside of your own.
Kill anything from the woods.
My crimes.
I was a different person then, a little boy, holding a lie. I am now a grown male holding a much greater one. But the muscles I built in my formative years solidified the foundations of my skills.