The Never King, page 20
part #1 of Lost Lands Series
I glance to my right, to the south where the massive ocean liner pushes violently through the waves. It’s home to the majority of our tribe. Three thousand people aboard it, including herds of animals and long lengths of hydroponic farmland. A hospital, schools, and a library to make the history of mankind jealous.
“He took me to see the animals,” I continue. “The kitchens, the orchards. They gave me fresh cherries and apples, and then I saw the lemons. They looked like sunshine, they were so yellow. He cut one open for me and the smell knocked me backwards. I loved it. Everything about it. It was my favorite thing in the world for so long.” I turn my head to look over my shoulder at him. “Do you know what I smell like?”
His face twists in a look of confusion, his dark eyebrows forming a hard V on his brow. “I’m not in the habit of sniffing my sister.”
“I smell like lemons.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“My clothes do too. It’s in my soaps, in my laundry. They put lemon on my fish and in my drinks. I swear to you, I sweat the scent. Since I was eight I have smelled, tasted, and touched lemon almost every minute of every day, and do you know what?”
“You’re sick of it,” he guesses correctly.
“I can’t stand to look at it. I loved it, but now I can’t get away from it. That’s what happens when you give people a piece of yourself. They define you by it. Box you inside it until you can’t see your way out.”
When he doesn’t respond I get nervous. I’m anxious that he doesn’t understand, that I haven’t been clear enough, but what I want to say is nothing I can say out loud. Not easily, not even to him; the one person on the entire planet that I trust.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I ask hesitantly.
“Yes.”
My heart is in my throat, hoping I’ve been heard. Praying he’ll say the words for me that I’m terrified to voice. “What am I saying?”
“You’re saying that you want lemon custard for dessert.”
I don’t laugh. I don’t do anything but stare and sink, fall and flounder as my hopes dash against the front of the ship that neatly slices through the water. I drop my words unspoken into the sea where they’re cut in two, the severed pieces sinking in a swirl of white water. Garbled and irredeemable.
I turn ahead to the horizon. To the waning sun. The clouds roll over it, fading its brilliant pink hues and yoke yellow glow until they’re all but washed away. Dulled and dimmed to ghostly remembrances of what they should be. It’s distant, slipping farther from our bow every minute. We’re deep in the Seventh hour, creeping into the cold of the Eighth, and if we’re not very careful we’ll go too far. We slowed to stay out of the storms but now they’re brewing behind us too. The rolling sky of the horizon ahead and the crackling brightness of the clouds behind make me uneasy, and my maudlin mood shifts even deeper down inside me.
“Never mind,” I mutter numbly.
I’m not sure he’s heard me. The wind might have taken my words and sent them west into the night where no one will find them. Where they’re meaningless, unheard and lost in the darkness, and I feel my chest tighten at the thought. At the truth.
We fall into a silence that the world doesn’t join. The wind keeps on howling in my ears, the chop of the ship through the water crashes at my feet. I can feel the vibration of the engines under my hands on the bowsprit, eternal and relentless. How they keep up all day, every day year after year makes my mind ache to try and understand. The sheer monotony of it is more numbing than the icy spray on the soles of my feet.
“You need to come down from there,” Gav warns me gently.
“I know.”
“If Father sees you—“
“He probably already has.”
“You’re probably right.”
He leaves me be for a moment longer, letting the decision be mine. It’s not, though. It’s not mine and it’s not his. Nothing ever is.
“I’m coming down,” I finally surrender reluctantly.
I spin deftly, swinging my leg up and over the large wooden beam until I’m sitting on it sideways. My hair is blinding me, whipping in my face with the force of the ship driving relentlessly forward. I can’t see what I’m doing but I don’t care. I was agile enough to get out here, I’m agile enough to get back.
I slide toward the ship, Gav’s eyes on me as I go. The boat rises and falls gently against the waves making each movement dangerous. Throwing me off balance with every lunge.
“Liv, be careful,” Gav murmurs, his voice anxious.
“Talking to me while I’m concentrating isn’t exactly smart, Gav.”
“Alright, but just—mmm.”
I grin as he bites his tongue, his eyes heavy on me while I make my way slowly back toward safety. I’m nearly there. Just a few more inches…
“Livandra!”
My mother’s panicked shout cuts through my brain like a hot knife through fresh butter. It startles me, severing my concentration.
I feel my right hand slip first, then my left loses its tenuous grip on the smooth beam. I begin to topple sideways.
There’s nothing to grab onto.
“No!” she screams.
My last coherent thought as I fall is that my mother has got to stop screaming.
My last frantic, terror laden thought is that I’m actually going to die.
And it’s going to hurt.
Chapter Two
Gray
The Posher ships are passing. It’s a sure sign that the night is coming. As if the dark rolling in on the horizon wasn’t signal enough.
They’re late this year. They’re practically in the Eighth hour, somewhere I’ve never seen them. Standing on the high ridge on the outside of our mountain I can see the clouds colliding with them, closing in on them. They must have been sailing slow to avoid them, but it’s pushing their ships into the darkness, into the night where more storms are brewing.
It’s a no-win situation, but life is like that. Maybe it didn’t used to be, but it is now. Now we have nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. You have to weather the storm, come hell or high water.
“Gray!”
Karina is coming up over the eastern edge of the ridge, the evening sky behind her. Her dark hair disappears like ink on black paper, her white skin startling in contrast. She looks almost ghostly, her walk too lithe to be real. Her face too perfect to believe.
I feel my stomach clench hard at the sight of her, a weird mixture of joy and annoyance coursing through my veins. I grip tightly to the handful of rocks I’ve been rolling in my palm.
“Hey, Rina,” I call back.
“Are you up here to watch the Poshers on parade?”
“And to say goodbye to the sky.”
“Blech,” she groans in disgust. “Don’t remind me. I’m nearly crying watching it go. I can’t believe we have to go on lockdown in a week.”
“Two if you bundle up.”
“I do not. Thank you.”
I grin at her curt tone. Her undying hatred for the cold. “Then you’ve got a week.”
She reaches the end of the trail where I’m standing, her face flushed pink with exertion. She smiles softly. “Well then I better make the most of it, shouldn’t I?”
“I’d start now. We might not get as much daylight as we should.” I jut my chin toward the sea. “There’s a storm circling the Eventide ships. Looks like it’s going to roll inland.”
“Really?” She squints into the horizon. “It doesn’t look too bad.”
“It’s been building. We’re all going to get wet for sure.”
“They’ll hate that.”
I smirk. “They better get used to it ‘cause it’s happening.”
“They’re late this year.”
I nod in agreement. It’s the same thing every Gaian has been saying for the last week. Our entire village has been buzzing about the lateness of the Eventide since the Seventh hour began and there’d been no sign of them. “After Porton and Ambrios they’ve still gotta sail south down around the peninsula. That’ll take ‘em at least two weeks.”
“It’ll be totally dark.”
“If they don’t make up the time, yeah.”
I toss one of the rocks out toward the ocean, aiming at the ships. Of course it lands well short of the mark but I imagine it hitting the hull of one of their honey colored ships, pinging noisily off the side. Maybe startling some Posher out of their sleep.
Karina pushes her long hair out of her eyes. She pauses for just a second, but I know what she’s thinking. I know what she’s going to ask before she opens her mouth.
“Is your brother back yet?”
There’s the clench in my gut again. The annoyance. “No. Easton isn’t back yet. None of them are. They were supposed to be back three days ago.”
“They better hurry. The frost is coming.”
I nod my head, my eyes fixed on the ships. “Everyone is running late this year.”
My older brother left for the city with a group of twenty men and women two weeks ago. They go twice a year to join in a souk that lines the streets of Porton with booths and shops selling goods that the surrounding villages have harvested or made during the six months of sunlight. We go to sell but we also go to stock up on what we don’t have here in the mountains. There are medicines that need to be bought, both for the animals and for us. Fertilizers and seeds. Cloth, machine parts, oil, tools. Most of the medicine we rely on the Eventide to bring in from other ports around the world. They ride into town before the start of the festival, charge merchants in the city sky high prices, the merchants then shoot the prices even higher for us, and the Poshers disappear before having to look us in the eyes.
We hold festivals in our villages as well. Parties that run for weeks to celebrate being out of the caves. Outside in the fresh air, under the sky. We have to keep our homes completely blocked off from the elements when the sun sets or while it sits high and constant in the sky, but we have electricity. We have lights that simulate daylight to keep us and the animals from going insane. Nothing can compete with the real thing, though. With clouds and a breeze and the smell of the ocean.
The parties ended two days ago. It felt weird. Normally the souk crew is back from the city in time for the last days but they never showed. We all assumed they were waiting for the Eventide to show up and sell their overpriced goods but if they’re just sailing by now it’s going to be cutting it close. Easton and the others might be trekking home in the dark. They’ll either have to take the tunnels or face the animals gathering food for hibernation. The bears will be prowling the wild in droves in the next few days. The wolves too. All of them eager to get what they need and go to ground before the vishers wake up.
No one wants to be on land when that happens.
Lightning strikes in the west behind the ships. The storms are closing in on each other, moving inland and carving a path right over the top of the Eventide. From our vantage point on the ridge I spot other Gaian’s lighting torches, signaling to the fishing crews to get inside. They’re abandoning the beach, running inland. Thunder rumbles, distant and angry, and I absently take Karina’s hand in mine.
“We better get inside,” I tell her, watching the clouds. “The storm is about to start.”
She nods in silent understanding as she follows me down the hill. We hurry together, our hands loosely clasped, and it’s not until we’re halfway down the mountain that I’m aware of it. My stomach clenches for a third time, painfully bloated with joy and a weird sense of hope.
It doesn’t last.
Chapter Three
Liv
A strong hand grabs onto me, the grip like an iron shackle around my wrist. I instinctively wrap my hand around the arm attached to it to sturdy our connection. My body stops falling and begins swinging instead, my face heading straight for the hull at the bow of the ship. I don’t fight it.
I curl into a ball as much as I can, taking the brunt of the hit with my shoulder. My body makes a hard thunk! as it connects with the wood. I shriek in pain, closing my eyes so hard it hurts.
Gav holds onto me as I swing slowly, waiting for my sideways momentum to die out. I feel cold, salty wisps of sea spray peppering my bare skin, reminding me of how close I came to falling into its deadly grasp. Even if I could swim I’d be dead. They wouldn’t come back for me. We never go back for anyone. And no one can swim forever.
When I’ve stilled Gav starts to pull me up. He grunts and grumbles above me with each hard, decisive yank. My hair flies around my eyes, giving me shattered glimpses of his strained face and the corded muscles under his brown skin. The dark lines of the tattoo on the inside of his forearm. Mine stands out even darker, fresher. Smaller but no less important.
I use my other arm to grab onto whatever I can to help him hoist me up until finally I’m flopping over the railing, gasping like a fish out of water. Gav stands hunched over me, his hands on his knees as he breathes harshly through his nose, but I barely see him. Instead I stare up at the sky, my sight going fuzzy around the edges as adrenaline spikes my heart rate far too high. My shoulder aches, my pride is destroyed, and my gut is clenched by the darkness of the sky. I know it’s not possible at this hour but I swear I can see stars poking out through the perfect dusky blue.
It’s a terrifying thought.
My mother’s face appears over mine, blocking out the sky with her blond curls and tense gray eyes.
“What were you thinking?!” she hisses loudly.
I close my eyes. “I wasn’t.”
“Is this a cry for attention? Because I promise you, you’ll get it, but it won’t be the kind you’re hoping for.”
“I wasn’t hoping for anything. I just…”
“You just what, Livandra?”
I flinch at the use of my full name. At the weight of it and everything it carries.
“I just wanted to be alone,” I admit, opening my eyes reluctantly.
Mother stands up straight, looking down her nose at me. “Your father won’t be happy about you making a scene like this. People are always watching.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
Me too.
“He’s on the third Dasher,” Gav reminds her, offering me his hand to help me up. His voice has taken on that charming cadence he has that’s like a balm to our mother’s overactive nerves. “He didn’t see her. More than likely only one or two of the crew did. We can contain this.”
“I won’t lie to him,” she replies stiffly.
“No one asked you to. If he never asks about it you never have to lie about it.”
She glances at me, looking me up and down from my bare feet to my loose, disheveled hair. I expect her to snap at me again. To tell me for the millionth time to act like a lady or remind me how important our family’s image is, who my father is, but she doesn’t do any of that. Instead she stares me straight in the eyes and her face softens, turning almost sad.
“I can’t protect you like I did when you were a girl,” she tells me tenderly. She touches my arm lightly, her fingers covering the ink on my skin. “You’re a woman now. You’ll have to fight your own battles.”
“I can take care of myself,” I promise.
Her lips purse tightly. “I hope to God that’s true.”
Gav takes her hand in his and squeezes it warmly. “Everything will be alright. Don’t worry.”
She smiles up at him gratefully. Her face glows golden as the east horizon when she looks at Gav. He’s her pride, her joy, her success. A bright boy bursting with manners and kindness and the unmistakable, unfakable ‘it’ that belongs to all great leaders. He’s destined for everything, for the head of every table of every house in our tribe, and she couldn’t be prouder.
She couldn’t wonder more where she went wrong with me.
“We’ll keep it quiet,” my mother agrees, deftly plucking the ornate necklace from Gav’s hand. She brings it to me, holding it out to wrap around my throat. “Your father doesn’t have to know. Not if you promise me it’s the last time.”
“I promise,” I vow stiffly.
“Good.” She clasps the jewels around my neck where they sit heavy like a yoke against my collar. She takes my shoulders in her hands to hold me steady. “You’ve been out of sorts lately, Livandra. Missing meals, avoiding your studies. I really hope this isn’t about that boy.”
I hold statue still, willing myself not to cringe. To shudder.
‘That boy’ was a beautiful sixteen year old carpenter with elegant hands and an ear for the piano. I caught him playing it one day on our Dasher when he was supposed to be fixing a broken chair in the dining room. He was embarrassed to be caught but when I sat down next to him and begged him to keep playing he smiled and humored me. He was wild and unpracticed. A natural with so much talent it burst from his fingers in angry low notes and delicate, fluttering high notes, running then slowing in a frolicking refrain that left me breathless. I sat with him for only ten minutes listening to his song and in that time I felt something so vivid and real, untamed and unstructured, I could barely speak. I had never known chaos could be so breathtaking. Even as he stopped, as he leaned toward me and pressed his lips to mine, I couldn’t find words to describe the connection I felt to him in that moment. To his music and his emotion. Even now I can’t say what it meant to me.
My father caught us. He pulled me from the piano bench, cornered the boy, and beat him with a leg from the broken chair. I cried and screamed for him to stop, but he never hesitated. He didn’t slow, not until the boy collapsed on the ground at his feet. He was in the hospital in the city for months recovering, and even though I never saw him again I heard he would never look the same. He’d probably never play the same either. He’d gone all but deaf in his left ear.
“No, Mother,” I reply coldly, “it’s not about—“
Lightning crackles across the sky behind us, reflecting across the water like flames on a fractured mirror. A boom of thunder drums inside my ears, rattling my bones until I’m trembling.
