Rising - Patrick Sean Lee (big screen ebook reader txt) 📗

We’ll all help one another to clean you up, find some food and a place to stay, and then…” And then what? My plan to get Mondra and Tereka back here safe and sound, and afterward level Polit, has holes in it. Once I fire the first shot, even with Darra as my shield, all bets will be off, it hits me. Knowing Polit’s rulers, they’ll eventually throw the president to the wind and do what must be done. I have to think.

Mother scuffles up to our side bearing Father’s weight as best she can. I hear Sant dragging Darra down the ramp.

“Can you get him home?” I ask Mother. “Is Jeren…was Jeren there when you left?”

“Yes, I can manage. There’s Philia. She’ll help. And yes, Jeren was fine when we left.”

“I can walk,” Father mutters.

Some of Black’s adults are finally stuffing their fear and approaching slowly. Mostly the women who aren’t in the mines, or inside Polit ministering to those bastards’ whims. They see familiar faces in us, but cannot help but see a creature not one of them could possibly imagine existing. They gather in groups, speaking low to one another. Behind us, the Helicere alone has to scare them half to death. They know what it’s capable of doing. Our neighbor, Philia steps forward.

“Saorse!” she exclaims. Runs, now, to Mother’s side.

“Help me get Rosin home,” Mother says. I watch them leave. Philia only looks suspiciously at me for a second as the three move down the dirt road. Suddenly I feel like the witch again.

The children begin to return with leaking buckets of water and scrubbing tools. The things Black residents have had years of practice using on the streets and walkways of Polit. Their homes. I think some of us even had to scrub their trees and bushes.

“Faerborn, sit down, darling. We’re going to clean you up.”

“Faerborn not need clean. Faerborn want go home.”

“In time, darling. In time. You must be patient, though…and you need a bath. Please, sit down. This won’t take long. You’ll feel better afterward, I promise.”

It might take hours, I have to laugh. Whatever.

“You three,” I say to the first of the children to arrive, “take the water and brushes into the Helicere. Clean it up, please. We might have to use it again. Hurry now.”

“No!” Faerborn cries.

“It’s okay, Faerborn. Just sit quietly. Alana knows what is best.” He might believe that. I’m not so sure anymore.

“What shall we do with him?” Sant asks, poking the knife at Darra's side.

“I guess find some rope or something to tie him up with. After the kids finish dunging out the hold, let’s put him in there. Do you feel like staying inside and guarding him?”

“Not really, but I will. But then what?”

Good question.

A boy I’ve known for as long as I can remember pushes his way through the large crowd now gathered. Gerstam Mendoll. He’s limping—the result of a Polit cop attack four or five years ago when he dared leave Black without a pass. His punishment was two legs smashed with a steel pole right inside the gates for everyone to witness. This is what happens when you violate the rules, people of Black.

I need Sant beside me, but we need a reliable guard to watch over the scum Darra while we consider a workable plan of attack. Gather food, if there’s any to be found here. Settle Faerborn in. Find Jeren. I so need Sant beside me.

I leave Faerborn and walk to Gerstam, throw my arms around his shoulders. “I’m so happy to see you, G. That guy back there is the president of Polit. We captured him! Are you willing to keep an eye on him for a while? You can have the knife my friend Sant is holding. If Darra tries anything funny, you can stick him with it. Will you watch over him until I find Jeren and my sisters?”

Gerstam pokes his head around my side, slowing as his gaze passes Faerborn. He has scrubby blondish hair almost as unruly as a Jade’s, and he is nearly a foot shorter than I am, the result, probably, of his beating and poor treatment afterward. No doubt made worse by the food, or lack of it, that he's subsisted on all his life. I see his eyes light up.

“Yeah, I’d be happy to…how did you manage to get hold of him? Steal that Helicere? Wow! And what is THAT,” he says pointing to Faerborn.

“I’ll tell you all about it later. In the front, in what's called the cockpit, you’ll find a headset. It has ear muff-looking things, and a little wire attached to it. You’ll know it when you see it. Put it on and listen for anyone talking. If they do, send one of the children back to us. Tell them to repeat whatever you hear, word for word, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Wow.”

“Oh, don’t answer anyone who might be talking. Just listen. And don’t push any buttons on the screens in front of you. Understand?"

“Yee-ah.” He leaves in a wide semi-circular route, eyeing Faerborn until he nears Sant and Darra. There he stops to survey the president momentarily. He mutters something I can’t hear, spits on the ground near him, and then hobbles up the ramp into the interior.

Despite his physical disabilities, Gerstam is maybe the smartest boy I’ve ever known. His father, a sometimes-friend of my father, along with his two older brothers and one hundred twenty-four others, died in The Second Uprising in the Common Era year 4230. It was water that year. It might just as well have been grain harvested from the thousands of acres of fields outside the walls—there was little to be had after Darra and his gang slashed Black’s rations to next to nothing in the fifth year of the drought. Slow starvation brought men such as Gerstam’s noble father, Samar, to angry protests that were put down with brutal efficiency. A week after the wells dried up inside Black, the fury of scores of men and their families now dying of thirst, as well as starvation, unleashed itself. Two hundred desperate men, women, and teenage boys burst through Black’s northern gate with sickles, pitchforks, and what few small arms they had, stolen from our masters’ homes and Polit armories, and invaded the grand city. Before many of them even made it to the warehouses where tons of forbidden grain were stored, gunships such as the one behind me, cut them to ribbons. Polit police caught the remainder who had scattered. Most of them died, but not Samar, the leader of the riot. He was caught kneeling over his oldest son, Jaylan, who had escaped the deadly barrage from the Heliceres, but not the bullets from the police. Samar, his other son, and eight others were taken alive, dragged unconscious and bleeding to Polit Central prison. I know the terrors unleashed behind those walls. I was kept there for a week before I was bound and gagged and sent to Folly. Polit's greatest mistake.

No trial was forthcoming, just the executions. Samar and the survivors were brought back to Black, strung up on a line of wooden poles stretching half a block, and then one after another, eviscerated. Every citizen of Black was forced to watch. An example was set.

I was there, a nine year-old girl. I closed my eyes, tried to block the sounds from my ears, but until I die I’ll never forget the screaming. I wish I had known then what I know now. The executioners, the gunships hovering overhead—all of Polit and everyone in it would have been incinerated.

That was then.

I still find it odd, though at the time I was simply grateful, that my own father—how should I say it?—cowered; refused to join the rebels. Survived.

The drought ended after another long, merciless year of Black suffering. More years passed, we put the horror of what had happened as far back in our memories as possible, and life went on. Dragged on.

Gerstam could not bury his grief, though. Yet even at his young age he knew what would happen if he tried to exact revenge. I don’t know whether he actually watched his father, his brother, and those other unfortunates as they were opened up, their skin peeled off like the hides of animals in a slaughterhouse. He never said. But he did vow revenge. He clandestinely raided the very grain storehouses his father died trying to break into. Had he been spotted and captured, the penalty, of course, was death, but he was quick as a fox; a shadow amongst the shadows whenever he snuck out of Black. He stole not only grain, which alleviated at least some of his family’s pain and suffering, but also anything not bolted down.

“Look, Alana! Another book, loaded with pictures!” His little library, hidden beneath the floorboards of his tiny house grew. There was some mysterious enchantment in collecting books that captivated him. He was, in a way, my first (and only) teacher. Schools are not allowed inside the walls. Knowledge is power, Polit knows. The vast majority of Blacks remain ignorant to this day. But not Gerstam. Not me. Not Mondra, either. His only mistake—it was inevitable that he would eventually slip up—was sneaking out in broad daylight on one of his missions. Gerstam had grown over-confident, thrown caution to the wind, to his detriment.

They caught him slipping along an avenue leading to one of the graineries. Of course he hadn’t stolen anything yet, but after it was discovered that he had no pass, he was beaten badly, then thrown back into our prison community with a warning.

It took six months for his body to heal. As much as it did, anyway. Mondra and I often went to him during those terrible days. Read to him, encouraged him, helped his destroyed mother nurse him. His days of leaving Black were over, however.

I am wondering, now, whether his guarding of Darra is wise? Sant has handed him the knife. Darra is inside the Helicere with Gerstam and the three children scrubbing Faerborn’s vomit off the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. It would take nothing to set Gerstam off. His opportunity to exact a revenge for what happened to his father and brother, and those others.

I reconsider my statement of a few moments ago, turn and shout after him, “Don’t kill him…yet!”

He doesn’t answer.

FOUR

 

Sant is by my side, close as my skin, still moved visibly by the horrendously depressing atmosphere of Black. I hear no screaming inside the Helicere, thank the gods, and unless they are miles above us hidden in the gathering clouds, the gunships have gone. We have some time. I’ll go to the northern gate with Sant after Faerborn has enjoyed his first bath in I have no idea how long; after quickly visiting my home to discover Jeren’s whereabouts. I pray he is somehow still there, and that he is well.

I can’t leave Faerborn just yet. He is sitting quietly beside me, much calmer now. Confused, yes, I am sure, and soaked to the bone. An army of delighted children stand on his gargantuan thighs, laughing, scrubbing, tossing bucket after bucket of water onto his body. Soap suds flow down his fur like little rivers