Читать книгу City of Dust - Michelle Kenney - Страница 9

When a black aquila falls from the golden sky, it will spark a winter of a thousand fires. Or so Grandpa used to say. Yet this day was iris blue in bud. Colour enough to steal a girl’s thoughts. And the ground was green with the sweetenings of spring as the bird fell. It was noiseless at first, before the hollow barrelling of wind, like a meteorite powering directly towards Arafel’s forest. And as though it was Pantheon’s ice-bitch herself, I ran.

‘Tal?’

Max’s whisper steadied me, like the steadfast branches of the Great Oak in the middle of monsoon season. And I strained through the nightmare towards the voice that could take me away from the fear, the watching forest, and the distended white faces that loomed and receded, jeering. Always jeering.

‘Tal?’

The second whisper pulled me back. It was the way it worked. The first reached through the haze of distorted images; the second caught and pulled me home.

I rolled in to his chest, burying my face in his outdoor scent as my room loomed into focus. Everything was just as it should be. The wizened branches of our white oak were still entwined above my simple reed mattress, mirroring our bodies. I drew a steadying breath, and forced my tight limbs to relax. I was home.

‘The same?’

His gentle question said everything, and I nodded before turning away to stare out at the kind night sky. It blinked its forgiveness. Somehow it knew Max’s care was bittersweet. That, after Pantheon, I’d understood three things:

One, that for some inexplicable, never-to-be-understood reason, Max loved me; two, that I loved him back, fiercely; and three, that his forest-green eyes were entirely the wrong colour.

I’d nearly whispered it once, after a dream, but managed to stop myself just in time.

Commander General Augustus Aquila. It helped to think of him as Pantheon’s new leader, untouchable and distant somehow. It kept him at bay from my everyday thoughts, even if it didn’t work in my dreams. And yet somewhere deep inside, Max knew. I saw it in the way he glanced at me when he thought I was distracted. And the guilt was suffocating. Which was why I kissed Max, why I wanted his body to warm mine before the dawn shift, why I listened when he talked about the future – our future – ignoring the twisting deep inside.

And according to the seasonal crop chart, it had been twelve months. Twelve sunlit months since I’d escaped the Lifedomes; fifty-two grey weeks since Grandpa had left; three hundred and sixty-five fragile dawns since he’d touched my skin.

August.

I closed my eyes, and this time my oblivion was like the fathomless sky.

***

‘Brace of pheasant! Enjoy ’em now before the monsoon! Coming early this year so Mags says … Enjoy nice fattened birds, two for a good price!’

I grinned at Eli, ignoring Bereg’s overloud prediction that the late summer rains would wash the wildfowl clean out of Arafel. He said the same every year, even though everyone knew he and Mags, the village fortune-teller, had a long-standing arrangement. And despite his gloomy warnings, I’d never once eaten squirrel all winter.

‘Split shifts this week,’ Eli signed as I traded two of Mum’s woven garlic and shallots chains for a loaf of sunflower bread. It was her favourite.

There was a buzz about the market this morning. The warm spring sunshine glinted off the ripened beef tomatoes, and early corn-ears were piled high like edible gold. One of the perks of wholesale climate change was the chance for two harvests if we farmed carefully, though the monsoon rain always threatened the last. This year the first crop was good though, and that took pressure off us all.

I nodded, stifling a yawn.

‘My best lychee source for your morning shifts?’ I signed, watching my twin’s face break into a mischievous smile.

Now twenty, Eli had changed the most over the last twelve months. Isca Pantheon had scarred us all in more ways than one, but when Max, August and I thought Octavia had beaten us, Eli had found strength in his extraordinary gift. And that day had bred a new quiet air of authority in him.

He’d left the shy boy behind, along with his dependence on his sister to communicate with the world. And while I found it disquieting at first, it was also oddly freeing. I’d always loved with him a protective intensity, but he’d forced me to see the man he’d grown into. And he was a man who’d saved us all from a barbaric death; a man who looked after those he loved; and a man who understood animals better than anyone else I knew.

‘Your best lychee source – and you muck out Celia for a week!’ Eli bartered, winking.

‘What? She’s in season, isn’t she?!’ I protested, alarmed at the thought of going anywhere close to Eli’s heavy boar sow at her most unpredictable.

‘Think I’d rather snooze in the Great Oak,’ I added, watching his smile fade.

‘Still not sleeping then?’ he signed.

We made our way out of the busy marketplace towards the wizened wisteria tree at the edge of the forest. Its aged branches and lavender fronds created a natural canopy under which hunters gathered on days like today – the last day of our working week, celebrated with traditional tree-running trials.

I shook my head lightly, shifting the woven basket of traded goods on my arm. My disturbed nights weren’t exactly a secret, but I was wary of talking about them with Eli. Because of Max.

The tension between them was so real, and yet I couldn’t have survived the last twelve months without my best friend. A brief glance over the village fire, and Max and I were both back in the dark clawing tunnels, trying to breathe through the swirling dust of the Flavium. Those memories often clung to the edges of my consciousness until dawn crept through the woven roof of our treehouse, or Max’s warm arms chased them away.

Mum had turned a blind eye to his dusk arrivals and dawn exits through my window. She recognized we were no longer two people, as much as two parts of a story that only made sense together. But Eli had been less enthusiastic. Max had always represented an intrusion to our twin bond, and our new arrangement had only compounded that feeling. I tried to reassure my brother, but he only shrank from conversation, isolating himself from me. The truth was, Max and I were closer than any other friends I knew. And although the line was blurred, there had been one night of torrential rain two months before when the nightmares wouldn’t stop, no matter how tightly Max held me.

We were both guilty of needing to leave it all behind – Pantheon, its cruel perversions and terrifying creations – and somehow that desire had turned into a fire we couldn’t quench. And there was an irrevocable feeling of needing to know whether it could mend us.

So, he’d stepped inside my world completely and when he gripped my hand that night, our bodies fused, we unlocked a door we couldn’t quite close.

It hadn’t happened again, despite the burn in Max’s eyes, but the memory was there now, binding us, dividing us.

And Eli didn’t like it one bit.

‘At least my dreams are tamer than the rumours!’ I winked.

Eli grinned. The whispers about the Inside flourished despite our attempts to quash them, and were more exaggerated every time I went into the village school. Most of them were fireside stories, embellished to entertain. But an echo of the truth was always there, despite our pact to say as little as possible about what we’d actually seen.

‘Kai asked whether Insiders breathe fire yesterday!’ I signed.

‘Ha! Hope you told him only his schoolteacher can do that!’

I smirked and shoved him.

‘Time to run,’ he challenged.

I smiled as he grabbed my basket and passed it to Mathilda, one of the Elders who invigilated the trials with members of Arafel’s Council. The trials were an important village event, honoured every ten days, and we raced according to our age and ability. Eli and I both competed as adult hunters; although Max and I often ended up leading the field, much to Eli’s irritation. Today, though, I wanted to run with my brother.

‘Time to fly,’ I corrected, pushing my tongue into my cheek. He grinned his response, and just for a moment it was just like old times.

‘Hey, foraging queen! Hope you weren’t expecting me to go easy today!’

Max’s strong arms lifted me clean off my feet and swung me round, despite my protest. He put me down rapidly, but the damage had been done. Eli’s sunny expression dissolved as he turned his back to watch the young tree-runners line up. And with his tight shoulders and folded arms, he might as well be a million miles away now.

I glared at Max who only held up his hands a little guiltily. We’d discussed keeping things low on the village radar. For Mum and Eli’s sake. But I also knew Max suspected me of an ulterior motive, and that he wanted Eli to know about us. He was saved by the sound of a sonorous ibex horn, followed swiftly by a whole cacophony of whoops and cries as the youngest tree-runners set off. Dressed in small trial tunics, with their faces painted the colours of the forest, they looked every inch a feral, tree-living tribe – worthy inheritors of Arafel.

‘Come what may, nature finds a way,’ I whispered under my breath. My ancestor Thomas’s legacy looked to be alive and kicking. Seconds later, they had been completely enveloped by the thick mass of trees and bushes, their presence only evidenced by the occasional rustle or flurry of surprised birds.

‘We’re up?’ Max tested.

‘Great,’ I responded in a way that told him he wasn’t off the hook.

But I knew my brother too well to attempt a clumsy retrieval of the situation just now, and the three of us made our way across to the hunters’ start point in silence.

Rief, Saba and Fynn, old school friends, were already waiting by the maple and I nodded briefly. There was always an air of anticipation at the tree-running trials. Learning to move and live within the trees had saved our ancestors from extinction, and the trials served to remind us of the survival skills that brought us through the dust.

‘Chalk?’ Rief asked.

Eli accepted the piece of dusty rock, and rubbed his hands ceremoniously, before passing it to me. The white powder helped with grip, but also focused our thoughts before the race began. Although most of the hunters knew the flying routes well, the Council occasionally added special challenges. The intention was to replicate the unpredictability of the outside forest as much as possible. This week Max, Bereg and a few of the older hunters had helped construct a sticky net between three acacias to challenge the younger runners.

I took the chalk from Eli, and whitened the palms of my hands methodically. The older trials were usually judged by speed, our acumen as hunters not expected to be in any doubt. But the Council weren’t above throwing in wild-card obstacles for us occasionally either. Either way, it paid to be prepared.

‘Hunter … Positions!’

Art’s command hung in the air and the majority of Arafel’s most skilled hunters suddenly melted out from the trees, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I stepped between Eli and Max, casting a swift glance down the starting line. There had to be more than eighty of us this morning. And with long, lean limbs, faces streaked with dirt and waists hung with seasoned weapons, the hunters were an impressive sight to behold.

A pregnant hush descended, before the pulse of the ceremonial chant thickened the air. It was a simple repetitive beat, low and rhythmic, supposed to replicate the drum of a hunter’s heart. A feral heart. I inhaled deeply. It was time. I focused my gaze on my leather-soled feet, and silently repeated the words that had come to feel like a prayer.

‘Why run when you can fly?’

I reached out to squeeze Eli’s cool hand, and he returned the pressure without looking. Then the ibex horn sounded again and it was just me, the forest and the sun at my back.

We flew like birds, running through trees as though we were animals that had always belonged there. Occasionally I caught the flash of a green tunic or brown hand, dirtied with dust to make it less visible, but no greetings were exchanged. Tree trials were sacrosanct, and no serious hunter would compromise their time with mischief or chat.

At first I hung back for Eli, hoping he might still run with me, but when I finally caught sight of him, he’d paired with Fynn. I swallowed my disappointment and flew on, Grandpa’s advice lulling me into a swift rhythm:

‘Remember what Thomas taught us. An Arafel hunter believes in natural order, respect for his place in the forest, and takes only what he needs to survive.’

His words were as good as imprinted in my mind, and it was several minutes later when I finally dropped to the floor to pause beside a drinking hole. This part of Arafel’s forest was lush and dark, and the water came from a deep underground spring, which made it reliably fresh and cool to drink.

I leaned over the water, and watched two hazel eyes gaze back from an earth-stained face. I stared back, trying to read them before I bent to drink. August had always seemed to find it so easy, but right now they seemed as closed and secretive as the dark pond water in which they danced.

I glanced over my shoulder. All was still. Max and Rief had run into a nest of fire ants, which had left me out in front. Fire ant nests were more usually found at the base of trees, but this particular nest had somehow managed to find a home in the centre of one of the well-used tree forks. I frowned. Art’s Council were clearly upping the stakes, and I had a suspicion it wasn’t just to keep things interesting. Art was nervous, and he had every reason to be.

We’d all but razed Pantheon to the ground, and then taken off. August had been left in charge, but who knew how that had gone down in the twisted, archaic world of Isca Pantheon. And now our existence wasn’t a secret. Cassius might be dead, but the Insiders couldn’t deny our existence any longer. I thought about the message I’d left: the photograph of Cassius striding through the forest, smiling and helmet-free. It was a message about betrayal on a momentous scale.

I stared back into my own jaded eyes. Our idyllic forest life looked cocooned and protected, but in truth it all balanced on the edge of a harvest scythe. Its continuity depended on political stability inside the domes, and that was so dangerous to assume.

The faint crackle of weighted branches filled the air, and I didn’t need a second warning. Rising swiftly, I darted up the nearby kapok tree.

A good hunter never gave up her lead, not for all the apricots in Arafel.