Chapter Eight: Uncomfortable Introductions
It was morning when I woke. My eyes were heavy, and my body moaned and cracked with fatigue. And then I remembered the day before. Somehow, it may be no more tired than I was before sleep.
Maybe it had been a dream, I thought wearily.
After a moment of debate, I stood to look at my refugees. They were still there. The two Elders slept in each other’s arms. I noticed because of their locked hands that the two had strange golden bands about their fingers. They were spouses, I guessed.
“I had forgotten what that looked like,” I said to myself sadly.
Eventually, I forced myself to look to the other two. The young woman slept alone. She was beautiful, but in a terrible sort of way. I remembered her tone from the night before. She was unkind and harsh, maybe even cruel. It was no wonder she slept alone.
I forced my eyes to the youngish man. His skin was a pleasing cream color, obviously the skin of a younger man. But his brow with long, dark, and harsh – set like an older man’s ought to be. The brows were mobile and expressive, though his eyes had told me last night that he didn’t want them to be. The eyes themselves I had seen in the night before to be a darkish color. They were a little narrow, and the long eyebrows arched out near the end slightly His nose, a sort of large thing, pointed down a fraction of a millimeter at the tip, the obvious result of having been broken several times. His mouth had a shade of hair around it, a shadow that reached to his thicker hair. It was so dark brown that I would have called it red. He was beautiful to me.
But I’ve seen the way he looked at me. To him, I was an unwelcome alien.
I decided I could not trust him, but that did not mean that I would do my job halfway. I had started to heal him, and I would finish my work. I reached out to his clothes, but even before I could react, he grabbed my wrist and twisted it.
Somehow, my eyes found his, and I saw that he wanted me to struggle. I found the best way to disappoint him was to do nothing about it, so I merely waited through the pain. When he realized that I was not swayed by his aggression, he released me, and it took all of my willpower not to massage the new bruises on my wrist.
“Who are you?” he eventually asked.
“What?” I asked brusquely.
His tongue was English, but hard English, and I resented our first encounter beginning with bruises.
“Your name?” he pressed.
I motioned to myself.
“Myth – Fisher.”
His eyes told me that he did not understand.
So I repeated myself.
“My name is Myth Fisher,” I said again.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard that name,” he said guardedly.
“It is unique,” I said.
“It sure is,” he said, but in a very pandering way.
His tone irritated me.
“What is yours then?” I asked.
He blinked with an air as if it was the first time he had heard this question in a very long time.
“Oliver Dark,” he said of himself. “Just Ollie.”
“Ollie?”
He nodded.
“Your name seems just as strange to me,” I said. “No meaning. Just a sound.”
He made an amused sound. Something about it showed a pleasant side of him, and I remember my manners. I held out a reluctant hand, which he took just as reluctantly, but when our hands touched he seemed to size me up again.
“You have rough hands,” he said, rather rudely, I thought.
“Well, my rough hands worked well enough to fix you up last night,” I parried.
“That’s right…” He seemed to think. “That was you.”
“It was,” I said.
He surveyed me in silence, as if I were being tested for something.
“Aren’t you a little short for a doctor?,” he finally said, bluntly.
I could tell he was trying to offend.
So I smiled.
“Last time I checked, one’s height played next to no role in the quality of one’s healing abilities.”
He seemed uncomfortable.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“Hand.”
I spoke slowly, but he still didn’t catch it.
“Where?” he asked, raising an eyebrow – again, rather rudely, I thought.
“Hand. You dwell in Hand.”
I pointed to the ground with irritation at his foul manner.
He laughed skeptically. It was a strange, misused laugh, and it became obvious that he was mocking me.
“Hand?” he asked.
His tone spoke with the voices of a thousand spiteful and malicious souls accustomed to cruelty and manipulation. I found myself actively resisting the growing scowl on my lips.
“This town is named Hand.” I shook my head behind wiggling fingers. “Not this.” I put my hand down to the dirt beneath us. “This.”
He eyed me motionlessly.
“I don’t understand,” he finally admitted.
“Figures,” was my only reply.
He eyed me again.
“What language do you speak?” he asked.
I raised my eyebrows in confusion. He pointed to his mouth.
“What do you speak?”
He motioned from his mouth to the air in front of his face, as if he intended something to come out of it. I tilted my head at his condescension but decided to be amused.
“Are you planning on throwing up, Mr. Dark?”
A hint of a smile picked at the edges of his mouth, which he quelled expertly. He just spoke slower and louder.
“Do – you – speak –?”
“Yes. I believe so. English?” I actually smiled. “This is English?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“You don’t know?”
“This is English, is it not?”
“A variation, I suppose.”
His voice was cold, as was his evaluation of me.
But I tried to greet him with patience and grace. It was hard for me.
“Are you from beyond the Great Gate?” I asked.
He furrowed his brow impatiently, but I saw he was attempting to confront the question.
“Are you from beyond the Gate?”
I tried to speak slowly, but I had hundreds of questions that I wanted to ask him.
“Do you come from the Outlands? Or the Kingdom of the Dead? You’re from the Great Gate, aren’t you?”
“What’s the Kingdom of the Dead?” he asked, finally catching something.
I searched his eyes for a joke and then rolled my own, finally losing my patience.
“I’m not playing this game, Outlander.”
“No, no, I’m serious…” And he was at last. “Where is that?”
“What? Washington? No, Dwindle. This is Dwindle.”
I felt unsure all of a sudden, like he knew better than I, despite the fact that I had resided in Dwindle all my life. Once again, the not knowing scared me. I said,
“You’re in Dwindle.”
“What’s the Kingdom of the Dead?” he asked again. “Where’s –?”
He cleared his throat to compose himself, as if his enthusiasm threatened to overcome his cold demeanor was inappropriate.
“Where’s that?”
“Hm. There are three Colonies. Dwindle is made of three that are known to us.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding.
“This one is named Hand. Then the one north of here is Turk. The one south of here is named Stronghold. The Kingdom of the Dead is closest to Dwindle. It lies beyond the Great Gate where the Bad People live.”
He narrowed his eyes at this.
“The Bad People?”
“People and descendants from the Great War many cycles ago.”
He seemed familiar with this.
“And they came from beyond the gate?”
“We name it the Great Gate,” I explained. “I don’t know where they come f
rom. That was a time for science, not like now.”
“What do you mean?”
“It is forbidden to venture there. That land, and the land that lies beyond, is considered the Kingdom of the Dead. That is where the Undead walk among the living.”
“Okay,” he said again, nodding, but I could tell he might not understand.
“I am a Dwin, from Dwindle, yes?”
He nodded.
“Where are you from?” I asked, motioning to him.
“I don’t understand you,” he said.
“You…come…from…where?” I asked, shrugging exaggeratedly.
He pursed his lips.
“Not from here,” he said cautiously.
I sighed. I should have expected deception.
“Do you hail from beyond the Great Gate?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he decided to say.
“You are an Outlander?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“What is it like outside the gate?” I asked, my eyes widening at the mere thought. “Was it very dangerous? You must be very brave.”
Suddenly, his foul manner seemed less irritating and more a facet of a hardened personality.
He just looked at me strangely.
“You’ve never been beyond the gate?”
“I’ve but seen the Gate once,” I said.
“Has anyone else?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “Only Outsiders are allowed outside the Colonies, and I am the only one left in this one. We are also closest to the Kingdom of the Dead, so I get to see it more than most Outsiders.”
“But you’ve never been there?” he pressed.
“As I’ve said, I have approached it. Once. It is forbidden here, but I saw it with my parents.” The last thing I ever did with them. I blinked the pain away and continued. “But I believe…I am the only one among the quick.”
My voice was tight.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“There are too many things to explain,” I said sadly.
“Try me.”
I saw a flash of inhuman eyes, eyes that had once loved me. Sunken and dark and yellowy, bloodshot with the blood that turned black after illness. My dad had started the chant of the Undead, a series of words nonsensical to all but the speaker.
“Important…you are important…Important. You are important.”
It was only a moment, but for the glimpse of a millisecond, I had the exciting hope of being a part of something bigger than I could understand. It only took a moment for them to disappear from my life forever, only a moment for me to see, truly, what was on the other side of that precious gate. What my life was really worth.
There was only death in the Kingdom of the Dead beyond the Great Gate. Feral Undead roamed the land, pacing, searching for food like animals. When my mom had ended my family by her own hand, the Undead reached through the metal bearings with a ferocity that I’d never seen, drawn to the sound like a predator unto prey. I remembered staring at the wall from afar – waiting for it to come. I had been too afraid to approach, despite the quest my parents had sent me on to go through it. The Undead wanted to get at me, my parents. They wanted to desecrate our bodies, consume our very souls. I heard it in their voices, behind their howls of rage as they clawed to get through a gate they didn’t understand.
I ran fast when my parents were dead by the bullets they’d given me to execute them with. I hadn’t been able to even do that. My mom had to do it. I ached in the quiet moments of the quiet days at the mere thought of forcing her to do that to save me. If I’d done it, she would not have had to endure the fear and pain and shame by ending my father’s life and her own just to save me.
I had always been a coward, deep down. Weak. And I knew it too. After that fateful day, my death – and life, for that matter – was irrelevant. No one would have cared if I lived or died.
We’d gone there to pass through the gate. To leave Hand forever. I had been important, they’d said, and if I could just make it through the Kingdom of Death, I would be free. I could change the world, they’d said.
But I hadn’t done that. I’d fled. Like a coward. After they’d been murdered by their own hands, I’d fled back to the stupid little Colony to maintain a tenth of a life that I had lived. Things had never been the same since then, and, though I never thought about it directly, I hated the results of my cowardice.
Their deaths had been for nothing because I was a coward. And I had to live everyday with wondering what might have been if I had made the trek to the Great Gate safely, questioning what had lied beyond that they wanted me so desperately to see.
My exception back into the Colony of Hand was one of the rare instances in which this had been allowed, as I mentioned before. And ever since then, Rhyme had given me hell for it, demanded where I’d gone, where I’d went.
But if I told him, if I’d told anybody, I would be cast out for sure, thrust back to face a quest that lingered in the back of my mind even still. Only my dearest friends knew what had happened. And I was discussing it with a random stranger.
I smiled at him, suddenly, and I tried hard to fix what I had let him see, to undo what I had so foolishly said. It was hard, but I forced a smile and made absolutely sure my voice was steady when I said,
“I’m sorry.” I cleared my throat a little. “I become accustomed to thinking. I spend most of my days outside alone. What were you saying?”
He surveyed me for a moment, and then asked,
“How far out do you go from here, do you think?”
“I know the town in and out for ten, maybe twenty hundred arm’s lengths. My Reach isn't very far yet.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I haven’t gone far – I’m a Cartographer. Do you know what that means?”
“No.”
“It’s my job to keep the land outside. I am called an Outsider for this because I am the only one legally allowed outside.”
There was a serious moment. And then, with sarcasm that baited a fury from me, he asked,
“So you’re saying you think you’re kind of a big deal around here?”
This made me very angry.
“You don’t get to mock me or what I do!” I suddenly said loudly. “You don’t know anything about me!”
“Touchy, touchy!” he said, smirking at the rise he’d gotten out of me. “Why so defensive? It was just a simple question.”
“There are no simple questions,” I glowered. “Nothing is simple here.”
“Don’t kill me with your eyes, now,” he admonished mockingly.
“I would not need my eyes to do so,” I replied evenly.
His eyes came into mine, and it seemed my defiance angered him.
“Are you threatening me?” he asked, narrowing his eyes. “Because that would not be wise.”
“No one has ever accused me of being wise.”
“Don’t make me defend myself, girl. I would dispatch you easily if it came to that.”
But he sounded a little hesitant.
I smirked.
“So is murdering your profession then?” I joked, raising an eyebrow. “Because you don’t seem to be good at anything else.”
“Dealing with death is my profession, yeah,” he said, with more than a little bitterness.
It was my turn to hesitate, and I both physically and mentally recoiled. I tried to recover, to undo this backtracking, but he saw it.
And something so very human passed through his eyes, as if they were an open archway that something could just pass through. I saw this shadow from the other side. It was gone again in a flash, and it was anguish, something I instantly recognized – and pitied. I felt guilt at having invoked it.
“We’re all killers here,” I said nonchalantly to try to fix my error. “But it’s best we don’t spread that around. Insiders aren’t so candid with death.”
“How would you know what we are?” he asked harshly.
I bit back a retor
t.
“No one volunteers to come here,” I said quietly. “Why would they?” I snorted bitterly then. “You came through the Kingdom of Death to get here. Besides, you become like the land here or it consumes you. Death must be your business.”
There was a moment, brief, maybe even imaginary, where I saw that world of pain in his eyes, and it opened up. The archway that it had been magnified to a degree so intense that I regretted the truth I’d just spoken. It disappeared in a flash, just like before, but it led me to believe that perhaps Oliver Dark was not just a brooding, impolite murderer.
“Don’t mistake me, Outlander,” I offered. “You do what is necessary to survive, I’m sure. We all do.”
“Don’t project your tendency toward violence on me, girl,” he snapped belligerently.
I’d struck a nerve too close to his heart – and he’d struck one too close to mine.
I decided to yield again.
“I’m…sorry…” I whispered. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”
He smirked.
“You didn’t,” he said a little too dismissively.
“Then, I’m glad,” I replied, feeling an outpouring of relief that he accepted my surrender, at least in name only.
“So, you said you were an Outsider?” he prodded next.
“Yes.”
“But you’re just a…” In a moment, he developed a small sense of propriety. His tone changed slightly. “I mean–”
“I am eighteen years old,” I said defensively.
He looked me up and down. It was awfully impolite in my land to do so as such.
“Don’t look eighteen,” he quipped.
“And you don’t look rude, but we can both be wrong about something.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. Don’t cry about it.”
“I am not crying,” I replied, furrowing my brow in confusion.
There was an awkward silence. My eyes searched the room.
“Your Elders are unique,” I said to him finally, nodding towards the two sleeping together. “Disease is not uncommon in our times. This is why I gave you so much medicine last night. Few reach Elderhood, and I did not want your fate to be sealed so thoroughly.”
He didn’t thank me. I glanced into his eyes, and it seemed like he wanted to, but he didn’t know how.
“Your Elders must be quite wise or strong of body to live so long,” I remarked into the silence.
“They’re probably barely forty or fifty,” he said.
“Very old here,” I said, nodding grimly.
This seemed to make him sad.
“Are you in charge here?” he asked, probably to change the subject.
I laughed.
“Absolutely not. I’m just a scavenger, little more. Others do more. I just happen to be an Outsider, and that’s why I found you.”
“How many people do you have here?”
“Enough. The numbers change daily.”
“What do they do?”
“We have an inventor. A mender…a cleaner. On special occasions a cook – no, he died – never mind. A healer – oh, but not for me. Or you too, I bet. We’ve been outside.”
“So?”
“So?” I asked, slightly bemused. “You’re foreign, and I’m…Tainted. Unclean.”
“Tainted?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
“Remember the Bad People of which I spoke?” I asked him.
He nodded.
“It is said that all who are immune to Undeath are descended from the Bad People in the Great War. All Outsiders are treated with…” I silenced my tongue, tempering it, before speaking again. “Outsiders are not treated the same as Insiders, despite the grave importance of our station.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair, does it?” he asked sardonically.
I could not tell if his mockery was of me or my people, but either way I did not like it.
“Some are treated with higher respect than others. My mentor was treated with higher respect than I.”
“Why?”
“People have never liked me – or my family. I do not know why.”
“Maybe because you’re descended from Bad People?” he asked, suddenly cautious.
I snorted.
“It’s just a stupid story,” I said, rolling my eyes. “People believe what they want to justify their bigotry.”
My dismissal made him smile. It was small, but it was true. Glorious.
It looked rare.
“But if you’re immune there might be some truth to it?” he asked, the same smile fading.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said, waving my hand. “I’m sure our officials would give you a better story.”
“Officials? What could you people possibly need officials for?”
I looked down at my lap then back up at him. I felt uncomfortable with his mockery of what I hated. I felt like I should defend it, though I very much didn’t want to. I thought it normal though, as I never in my life had met an Outlander, so I decided to tell him my truth. He would never know any different. My truth was as good as any. And if he did, then he wouldn’t care one way or another. He’d hear both sides.
“They are…a government,” I said. “Though this term is offensive, and you should not repeat it to anyone you meet.”
“Why?”
He seemed to barely be keeping up with the words I spoke, but I was too nervous to slow down.
“Government is a term for liars, brigands, and murderers. I would be put out for speaking such radicalisms. The people here need not another reason to oust me.”
Something dawned on his face.
“Wait…you have an organized system of government?”
“Of sorts,” I said cautiously. “Does this offend you? In Stronghold, we are mocked for this institution.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said matter-of-factly. “We have a government. But you can’t possibly have one. That’s too…civilized.”
“We are civilized, Mr. Dark!” I snapped. “Just because our highers demand to have this system implemented does not mean that –!”
“Wait – it would be more civilized to have a government, not less!”
I actually gasped, eyes wide.
“Is that how it is in your land?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I…just…” I didn’t know what to say. This seem scandalous to me, and I flushed. “Never mind. I don’t know.”
“So, are you involved with this ‘government?’” he asked, looking away from me.
“No.” I squeezed my fists, and a cool, sour liquid drained the thrill at his scandalous truths. “Nor would they take me if I asked,” I amended.
“Why?” he asked.
“I am in error for thinking this way, but I believe our government to be a foolhardy waste of time. They do nothing but fear-monger, which I find to be unacceptable. However, to question the government is…illegal. As has been the case of all governments since the Great War. And my uncle would not hesitate to arrest me.” I shrugged. “I am not alone in feeling this way, though it is not in my power to do anything about it, nor do I have powerful friends to help me were I excommunicated. Not that Hand would last long without me. But, as I said, it is not my place to speak on such things. It is called our leadership only, a nameless thing.”
“And you can’t speak out against it?”
“Because you will be put out.”
“But aren’t you important?”
“I am an Outsider,” I said again. “This position is supposed to make me important, but I fear it may not. I have just risen to the rank of the Advising Outsider. Just yesterday. But, like I said, I am not important enough, and I fear the assignments with such a title may change just because I am me.”
“People hate you that much?” he asked warily. “Why? Because of a story? Or do they have proof?”
I did not want to answer, for I wasn’t sure myself.
“It is offensive to brand it government,” I said apologetically. “Forgive m
y initial rashness. It is not my place.”
“Whose place is it?” he asked.
“My uncle’s,” I said, sounding as if I had just swallowed dirt.
I absent-mindedly put a hand to my head and neck to feel the sore bruises that he had put there.
“He’s in charge here,” I said.
Ollie said nothing and picked up my book, like he’d been eyeing it.
“Tell me where you got this,” he demanded.
“How charming you are, asking me all nice.”
“Fine. Tell me where you got this…please.”
I sighed.
“Outside the town – a hundred arms west.”
“From that burning thing?”
“That thing was a woman, Mr. Dark. And that woman…that woman…was Hand’s best Cartographer.”
I looked away, trying hard to compose myself, whispering,
“I, uh…I suppose that’s my job now.”
He looked away for the first time, at least having the courtesy to pretend to feel abashed. I narrowed my eyes as I contemplated if he really was sorry, but it didn’t take me a long while to pass over this speculation like trash.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked, trying hard to tell myself that there was no anger in me. “I’ve never seen one so new with so many markings.”
I pointed to the papered thing Evergreen gave me just hours before. I had not had an opportunity to look at it.
“This is a book,” he said.
He reached for it but hissed in sudden pain. I quickly put the book beside him.
“Here. Let me.”
I put the towel back into the medicine, restringing the cloth. I reached for his shirt to pull it up, but he grabbed my wrist again.
“No.”
He seemed abashed. He masked it well with anger and distrust, but I saw.
“I can do it,” he protested. “Don’t –”
I smiled at his modesty, which seemed to stun him. I was reminded of his foul character, and I felt the smile slip away.
“I am now more familiar with you than you are, Mr. Dark,” I said playfully.
He might have smiled, but it was for the briefest of seconds. He seemed afraid. The emotions that passed over his face over and over were hard to keep up with. Maybe he wasn’t used to talking, I thought. He was socially uneducated. The corner of his mouth twitched again, the hinting of a smile, and he finally nodded his consent.
I looked away from him, pulling quickly at his torn, bloodied shirt. It was crusted from spilled blood and past wounds from before even my work. I had bandaged his cut with a long rag I had found from last year’s clothing heap. But it would have to be changed. That was the nature of the thing.
“Don’t move,” I said quietly.
Before he could object, I yanked. He shifted, yelled out, and grabbed my hand again, as if it was less an offense and more a reflex. I was close to his face when I looked up. We were so very close to each other and his eyes were terrifyingly clouded with ulterior motives. Nothing in me trusted him. And everything in him suddenly scared me.
With that thought, I became just as aggressive as he.
“If you grab me again, I’ll chop that hand off, Mr. Dark!”
I yanked from his grip indignantly. When I began again, he took my wrist painfully hard and twisted. He was used to hurting people. I saw it in his eyes. So I shoved my knife to his throat with my other hand, a knife that sometimes even I forgot rested on my ankle.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said breathlessly. “But if you grab my arm like that again, I swear I will break yours.”
“Cute…” he replied, smirking while giving me a once-over.
I resisted the urge to blush as I glowered.
“Let. Go. Of. Me.”
He did. I retracted the knife a little slower.
“You were hurting me!” he cried out angrily.
His voice was frightening and real, like a feral dog that was lost and frightened.
“Don’t hurt me again,” he ordered, retreating back to the safety of power and giving orders.
“Whatever, you big baby.”
I moved again to mend his skin.
“Don’t touch me!” he said loudly.
He pushed me away violently. I fell on my hands, causing them to bleed with dirt and grime from the messy floor. They were still sore from meeting the ground after Rhyme’s wrath the day before.
Tears came to my eyes with the pain. They throbbed angrily.
“If you hadn’t moved, I wouldn’t have hurt you!” I managed to say.
“If you hadn’t torn the thing off, I wouldn’t have –”
“What was I supposed to do? Leave it? Let it fester?”
“Don’t rip the damn thing off like that!”
“You’ll catch something that I don’t want in my house!” I said back. “If you want to stay here, you’ll let me do what needs to be done or leave!”
“Who says I want to stay here?”
“Well, I don’t want you here either, but you’re here away from the death outside all thanks to me! So you’ll do what I say!”
“I don’t like this!” he finally admitted, his fingers finding his temples with a furrowed brow.
I made a sound of disgust.
“You poor thing. Safe and sound inside with medicine and shelter. I mean, how do you manage it?”
“You shut the hell up!” he said, snarling in my direction. “I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t ask for you! I didn’t even ask to be here, but I am!”
“Then, you need to just deal with it, don’t you? Because you’re here, and I’m not going anywhere!”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you need help, this is my house, and you’re my responsibility! Now, I refuse to let you draw the Horde to my doorstep because I was foolish enough to let you bloody up the Colony I live in! So, shut up and sit back!”
Finally, wearily, with an angry sigh, he did. But his eyes asked a thousand questions.