Chapter Sixteen

The Girl from Nowhere

Three Weeks Later,

It was Ariea’s turn to forage that day and the snow was falling early morning. She stuffed her feet into her boots and her arms into her quilted parka and slid open the warehouse door into the frost of Block Seventeen. Memphis stood across the street, donning a red woolly cap he had plucked from a storefront.

‘Has he said anything?’ Ariea asked as they started walking.

‘Is water wet? Course he hasn’t said anything. What has that been now, a week?’

Ariea sighed. ‘He can’t stay that way forever,’ she said eventually.

Memphis shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t put it past him. Each to their own; I mean, his wife did die.’

‘And what about you?’

‘Me? I’m good. I’m not exactly an expressive person. Emotion is too extreme for me.’ Memphis laughed. He and Merry had had a renewed optimism since they had left the Underground; they had found a new home with Agloff, Ariea and Oxford. ‘I was angry at Agloff too after we lost March Town,’ Memphis continued, ‘but Oxford has been way worse. Seems being angry at Agloff is a crucial element in overcoming grief.’

Ariea almost laughed. It seemed it was.

‘Agloff seems better though,’ added Memphis.

Ariea huffed. ‘Keeps talking about leaving soon as he’s strong enough.’

‘What’s his deal with that?’

Ariea’s lips tightened. ‘His mum left him when he was three to look for his twin brother. Never came home. Agloff’s convinced there’s more to it. I don’t agree.’

Memphis nodded, blowing between his fists. ‘So, what’s so annoying about that?’

‘Well, one of two things are true. She was gone for fifteen years, before the Underground. Way I see it, either, his mother was alive and chose not to come back. In which case, do you really want to listen to those excuses if you do find her? Or she tried to come back and couldn’t, so she died. In which case, why put yourself through the pain of finding that out? It is hard not to find personally insulting, when he had me and dad right there for him.’

Memphis shrugged. ‘I see it both ways.’

‘I really don’t like his mother,’ Ariea quipped as they rounded one block and headed down a sloped road towards the main checkpoint. ‘And he’s my best friend, so.’

‘Not more than that?’ Memphis said curiously.

Ariea looked up. ‘What about you and Merry?’ she asked half-accusingly.

Memphis’ smile burst into a laugh. ‘No! No. We’re just best friends too. Guys are my thing as well as hers.’

‘Oh,’ Ariea chuckled. ‘Ever been anyone?’

‘You think many people come through March Town?’ he replied dryly.

‘What a group of loners are we.’

‘That’s Colony Two for you.’ He paused and surveyed the empty road. ‘I’ll take the south today. You take north,’ he added, pointing towards the checkpoint. ‘Meet you back here, couple hours?’

Ariea nodded and tightened her bag across her shoulder. ‘Not a minute later, or you-know-who will blow up.’

Memphis only smirked and made himself scarce. His red woolly bobbed away, uphill from the checkpoint. Ariea listened to his footsteps crunch through the snow a while, then pressed on to the North Gate.

A low-hanging pole bridged two buildings ahead of the gate. A sign hung underneath.

Block Seventeen: Entering Section Four:

Display valid passes to the Section Guards.

Trespassers will be shot, and expired pass holders detained.

Live Free.

Winter

Ariea could not help but note the irony of the message’s final lines. A booth segregated the road ahead down the middle, with barb-wired fences sporting gates wide enough for one drawn on either side. Behind, the still frames of what Ariea assumed were tents greeted her as she squeezed through a gap in the fence line. Signs segregated lines from Category A to F. Past the checkpoint, Ariea could see another sign demanding the compliance of everyone who walked through.

Please wait while a nurse collects a blood sample for testing.

Then, proceed to your allocated Category.

Follow-up tests and recalls may be issued up to thirty days after testing.

The Winged Sickness must be eradicated.

Live healthy.

Winter

The ‘winged sickness’, she thought. Was winged fever still so prevalent, centuries after it had killed her father? Something had compelled Winter to abandon this block after all, and it could have been winged fever. They had grown since the fall of the Underground, she surmised, from a cult to a militant nation that ran entire concrete cities.

Ariea finally squeezed past the tents and out into area beyond. Most of the shops here were well-stocked. It couldn’t have been more than a few months since Winter left, Ariea thought. Nature was yet to overcome the city in her relentlessness. She pushed the door wide into a convenience store, broken glass snapping beneath her boots, and swiped rows of cans into her drawstring bag until it was sagging between her feet.

Content, she passed down the street, peering from store to store for a glance of anything useful: tools, weapons and medical supplies mainly. But the latter two seemed to have been skimmed from the city by the residents in their evacuation. Ariea looked up to see a banner urging citizens to flee with haste tangled round a megaphone. She moved onto one of the larger buildings, an office block two streets down, in hopes they had a first aid kit.

Its narrow corridors and boothed workspaces ensnared her, with a single line of light from the window ahead guiding her way. Ariea pushed past two desks and into a foyer. From the far side, she heard the squeak of chairs by the main desk.

Could have been a rat, she thought. Ariea brandished her switchblade and shifted for the desk. The squeak got louder. Chairs and tabletops shuffled frantically.

She clapped her palms against the desk and launched across it, jabbing her knife at the air and a chair went tumbling backwards as a body knocked against it.

A girl gawked at Ariea, trembling. Each held a knife to the other

‘Sorry,’ the girl mouthed, as she shuffled backwards into the clutch of furniture that surrounded them.

‘Hell to Feng, kid,’ Ariea panted. She waited for the girl to sheathe her blade. When she didn’t, Ariea took it upon herself to disarm, and sat down beside her. ‘Just looking for supplies. I’m not bringing any trouble.’

The kid nodded. ‘Same.’

‘Friends?’ Ariea extended a gloved hand to the girl.

She considered Ariea for a moment before taking it. ‘Friends.’

Ariea studied her. Bags as big as her cheeks hung below her eyes. Her hair was thin and greasy, while her shoulders sank into clothes several sizes too big. It was hard to tell how old the girl was, whether she was just young, or if she were older and underfed. Ariea’s inclination was the latter. She could have been Ariea’s age.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

‘’Choo looking at?’ the girl snapped and shuffled a foot from Ariea.

‘Just looking,’ said Ariea. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Tails,’ the girl replied. Her hesitation made Ariea doubt her honesty, but she didn’t press. ‘You?’

‘Ariea.’

‘You’re dumb if that’s your real name.’

Ariea huffed but forgave the girl’s impudence. ‘What are you doing out here by yourself… Tails?’

Tails examined Ariea. ‘Same applies to you. I’ve only been here six days. Me and my sister, we never stay anywhere more than a week.’

‘How come?’

‘Winter, why else? You ask a lot of questions.’

‘Been away a while.’

‘Uh-huh,’ the girl murmured in a way that sounded like she didn’t believe Ariea either. ‘So, you travel, like me and my sister?’

‘I suppose. There’s a few of us. Where is your sister?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

‘Um… thanks?’ Tails went to her pocket, pulling out a charred coin, smoothed like a pebble. ‘When we moved each week, we’d both pick somewhere to go. Flip the coin, whoever wins, wins- we go there. She was Heads, and I—’

‘—was Tails,’ Ariea said, to which Tails nodded, rolling the coin between her fingers. ‘Do you have real names?’

‘Heads and Tails are real enough, but yeah,’ the kid quipped. ‘We never told our names to anyone, because anyone could be working for Winter, right? And anyone could then work out where we came from and punish them.’

‘You’re runaways. I’m not Winter,’ Ariea said, unsure if that was Tails’ suggestion.

‘Okay,’ she answered. ‘And you saying that is proof of that, how exactly?’ Tails laughed. ‘We didn’t escape Winter and Eden to go back.’ Tails withdrew her knife, angling it towards Ariea ever so slightly.

‘How big is Winter now?’ Ariea asked, nervous.

Tails laughed again. ‘You don’t know?’

‘I’ve been away,’ Ariea repeated.

‘Winter are everything. They run all the blocks, like this. This one was abandoned when there was an outbreak of fever. There are a few independents, but they’re supervised. Winter takes all the kids to Eden. Once a year, they send Collectors round the towns to index every child and take their pick of the newborns. Occasionally folks will try and hide the kids. Never a bright idea, that. A lot get sent back anyway. The rest are divvied up between workers, soldiers and, not many, but some get taken the Infirmary.’

‘That’s different to when I knew.’ Winter used to steal the children. Now, it was habitual, a consensual yearly offering from towns to their grey masters. As inevitable as the tide and the seasons. Ariea couldn’t imagine how a practice as twisted as surrendering one’s own children could become tradition. But then, tradition made people act in strange ways like that.

‘Do tell, when did you know here, Ariea-and-others-who-have-been-away-a-while?’

‘You wouldn’t believe it. We lived in the Underground. It’s a bunker that way,’ Ariea began, extending an arm in the direction of the lake.

‘The Hollow?’ Tails said. ‘Always wondered if squatters tried living down there. Long time ago, Winter had people guarding the Hollow. Said there was something buried in there He wanted. They say He eventually gave up on it ever being found. Or was convinced no one else would ever find it.’

Ariea nearly choked. But she hid her disgust well. ‘Who exactly is “He”?’

‘Shit, you really have been away. He has many names. The Old One, the Winter, the Blizzard…’ Tails paused for thought. ‘The Order, the Benevolent, Malevolent. The Eternal. The vagrant tongue calls him Eshdrid. I’ve heard more, but the names fall in and out fashion like anything. Most people just call him He, like He even needs a name. But his name is Malvo Jask.’

Ariea paced up and down in furious thought, mopping her palm against her brow. ‘How!’ she exclaimed. ‘How can Malvo… Jask… still be alive. It’s been eight hundred years! He should have died ten times over.’

‘He’s inhuman, Ariea. But he rarely shows himself. He just sits in a room in Eden, all day, every day. I saw him once from a great distance, at his balcony. It’s his Apostles you need to watch for. They report to Jask.’

‘What do you call Jask?’ Ariea asked then.

‘Just ‘He’. If you use the others, including Jask, there’s a grey there where someone will be offended, and try to kill you. I speak from experience, so do as I say, not as I do. Use He. People will know who you mean. And I don’t know who you are, do I?’

‘That makes a sort of sense.’

‘Aye. There’s a twisted logic to it.’ Tails paused. ‘So they say, there’s some strange kid he’s protecting.’

Ariea turned her head, and her heart skipped a beat. ‘A kid?’

‘Yeah. He’s been trapped at Eden forever. Some sort of coma thing. He’s ill, like, properly ill. They say he was the first ever patient with winged fever. He’s where it started. And Jask, keeps him locked up… looking for a cure.’

Ariea’s heart crashed into her ribs faster with every word Tails said. ‘You- you think it’s true?’

‘Everything’s gotta have some basis in reality, right? But enough about our lord and master. Tell me about you,’ she said, almost threateningly.

‘There’s really not very much interesting to say about me. I’m just Ariea.’

Tails laughed dryly. ‘That’s a lie. Everyone has something interesting. Some dirty secret, some quirk, like they can talk backwards, or got six toes.’

Ariea felt unsettled, almost as if she were being interviewed. ‘Based on what you’ve told me, I think it’s better that I didn’t. I’m just a survivor.’

‘You’re learning,’ Tails said.

‘What feels like forever ago, I wanted to be a doctor. Sounds soppy, but just wanted to make people better. And I really, really wanted a dog. Just boring shit, a job and a pet but it meant a lot to me.’

‘What stopped you?’

Ariea leaned back and scoffed. ‘In your words, “Winter, why else.”’

Tails turned to her bag, rummaging. She produced a cumbersome lump of metal, looking like it weighed as much as her. ‘This is weird, but mind if I take a picture?’ She pulled her hand away and Ariea saw a gawking lens behind. ‘I collect photos of places. Just stuff I find interesting, or people. It’s a hobby. Keeps me sane, ya know.’

Ariea smiled. ‘Um, yeah, sure.’

Tails held the lens towards them and stretched out an arm. Ariea offered up a cute smile as the camera flashed in their faces. The camera whirred and, a second later, out popped a murky slip. Lines and shapes solidified into the image of Ariea and Tails. Tails stuffed it into her bag.

‘Um, have the Confederacy come back? The… Departed,’ Ariea asked then. Her mind rattled through a list of things they ought to be caught up on.

‘No. I always thought they were made up, to be honest. But, word of advice, choose your god, in case people ask.’

‘My god?’

‘Well, there are two types of people here. Those who worship Winter and hail the Old One. Praise him,’ Tails added mockingly, ‘or those who worship the Departed, the humans who fled us hundreds of years ago, to find a cure for winged fever. And one day, they shall return, on the back of Cerberus itself, and spread warmth and joy to all, saving us from ourselves, and taking us back to the Beyond. To that, I say, what utter bullshit.’

Ariea had to stop herself from laughing. ‘I can tell you now, they’re just not coming back. They left to get away from us.’

‘Oh, how nice.’

‘Do the people who worship Winter not, like, think it’s bad their kids get stolen?’

‘It’s a great honour. These parents cry tears of joy when their children are taken and never come back. If they do come back, they tend to think there’s something wrong with them.’

‘Why the hell would they think that?’ Ariea asked, aghast.

‘Any evil can be a good thing if you are so deeply invested in your own self-delusion, that the foundation of your very existence would fall away were you to question it.’

‘That’s deep.’

‘In my position, what can you do but think?’ Tails’ voice took on a coldness. ‘It’s six years, since me and Heads escaped Eden. There’s a knack to survival.’ Ariea could see Tails’ head tilt upwards, her mind called back in time.

‘Part of it is never taking the world too seriously, because otherwise it’ll mess you up. And it worked for ages. But then you make one mistake and…’

Ariea breathed, watching Tails struggle through the words, knowing these were words that had never been spoken before. She was an outlet for Tails.

‘She wanted to fight back, whatever that meant.’ Tails stared at her lap. ‘Me and her against an army. I said: “we are fighting back; every day we live is a cut against Winter.” It was this obsession in her, this thing that she had to do. It grew and grew and grew. She got bored with ‘just surviving’.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Ariea said again, ‘even if it doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Don’t be. We were staying this little inn in middle o’ nowhere… We had a fight. Just weeks of keeping it bottled. I pushed her, down the stairs, not deliberately but… I sat at the top and stared at her. I waited. And waited, for hours. I waited until I was sure she was dead, that she wouldn’t blink or twitch, or wake up. Because… I don’t know. I didn’t want to find her alive? Scared what would happen if she was. I buried her outside the inn. How messed up am I?’ Tails laughed a hollow laugh.

Ariea said nothing, extending an arm towards Tails’ back. For some reason, Ariea felt kind. ‘It was an accident, Tails.’ She thought she should be disgusted. But somehow that feeling didn’t reach her. ‘This place messes with us all. It ruins us. Where will you go tomorrow?’

‘Oh,’ Tails said. She took the coin between her fingers and set it spinning. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘What do you mean?’

Tails held the back of her hand up to Ariea, turning it round to show the blue hue of her palms, the skin cracked and dry. Ariea put her hand against her mouth. ‘Winter usually gives a vaccine, but I skipped out when I left.’

‘My god.’ Ariea covered her mouth.

‘Been a week. Figure I’ve got two days. Probably less. I don’t believe in God, but this is justice, right? This is justice.’ Her voice shook, tapered off into a whisper. ‘I’ve been very rude, Ariea. Sorry about that. Things need saying, you know.’ Tails wiped away a tear and searched for a smile. ‘Cheery thoughts, eh.’

‘How can you…’

‘You’re never ready for the person next to you dying. But me? I can cope with that. I deserve that.’

Ariea felt humbled. ‘I’ve known you for all of twenty minutes,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad to know you, even briefly.’

‘And you’re the most mysterious person I’ve ever met, Ariea-who-has-been-away-a-while. Equally honoured.’ Tails bowed in jest.

Ariea held out a gloved hand to Tails who studied it, uncertain. A moment of still time passed. Ariea took Tails’ palm in her own and the two allowed their heads to fall over their shoulders, their temples meeting each other in the space between themselves.

Tails was raised by the dirt and the blade, without love nor regard. Every meal was uncertain, and the enemy watched and listened through a thousand eyes. To survive took sheer force of will. Then to play death so nonchalant as to say, “oh well”. Ariea thought it took another kind of courage to accept such a fate, that every sacrifice made was in vain.

Or maybe it wasn’t, thought Ariea. As Tails had said, every day lived was a victory.

She looked at Tails and saw that life for life’s sake was worth it. Ariea’s father was denied the decency of death by Warden Drake. He just went ‘missing’ one day like the rest of them. For all of them that came before, Tails deserved its dignity.

‘You know what?’ said Ariea.

‘What?’

‘I think I’ll take this food back, and then I’ll come and sit here, and I’ll stay, and we can talk.’

‘About?’

‘Does it matter?’

Tails gently rubbed her head against Ariea’s. She smiled. ‘No. No, I guess not.’