“Oh, there’s always rumors going around like that,” Jude blurts, giving me a raised eyebrow kind of look. “My Mom says summer was supposed to end when she was a kid too.”
I shrug nonchalantly, then narrow my blue-gray eyes at him and say, “So that was at least a century ago, right?”
Jude moves toward me, matching my grin. Then he raises his right hand to my face and, to my surprise, pinches my lips shut. “Do me a favor, and just shut up, okay, Juno?”
I shove him away playfully, his fingers ripping away from my mouth, the sensation akin to sandpaper and fire. “Fine, cry baby,” I say, using my still burning lips to steal a quick peck from his cheek. I change the subject. “What do you think we’ll find today?” I ask the question, despite already knowing his response.
Jude smirks deliberately, unsurprised by the change in topic. “I dunno. Maybe one of those fancy flying carriages that are in all the stories. Or maybe a whatayacallit? A synthetic brain.”
“You mean a cumpewter,” I correct him. “That’s what my Father says they’re called.”
Jude scowls. “How would he know? Unless he’s a thousand years old, he wasn’t around to see ‘em, Juno.”
It’s my turn to scowl. “They’re just stories, Jude.”
He stops abruptly on the trail we’re following. We call it Woody Trail, but only because we aren’t clever enough to come up with something better. Tall, leafy whitewoods, and broad thick sentinel pines line the way before us. Jude has stopped at the bottom of the last rise before the beach–our destination–but the look on his face suggests he’s in no hurry to get there.
He says: “Then where did they come from, Juno? The stories, I mean. Why do we come down here every day if the stories aren’t real?”
I shrug at him and make my tone formal, mocking my Father’s: “Why do we get up in the morning? Hope. There’s always the hope that they might be real. It’s the hope that we might find something to give us a better life, to lead us to salvation.” I pause, seeing the unimpressed look on Jude's cherubic face. I just smile and continue. "But we won’t. We all know that the Forerunners were real; the same as we know that the sun will never leave the sky. But the Forerunners had their time, and they perished. They left behind some wonderful things, but we shouldn’t be quick to embrace them. As the saying goes: The ways of the Forerunners..."
"...are the ways of death,” Jude finishes for me.
“Right,” I smile as I take his hand in mine, feeling his trepidation as I lead him up the rise. He hesitates for a moment, but then I finally feel him squeezing my fingers gently.
“Too bad you don’t believe it though,” he says, moving as I pull him along.
I turn a smirk back on him. “Sounds convincing though, right?”
He shrugs. “It’s fooled your Father, so far.”
“I know. It’s almost too good. If he found out that we actually keep some of the stuff we find...”
“Whataya mean we?” Jude replies with a foolish grin.
“I mean that if I get caught, I’m taking you down with me.” I wink at him.
“Oh, thanks. You’re such a good friend, Juno Quinn.”
“I know,” I reply as we breast the top of the hill. The beach comes into view and, though I’d like to tell you it took my breath away, that wouldn’t be true. The fact is: I'm sick of that view. I’d been tasked by my Father, almost a year ago now, to come down to this hidden cove every day after work. A group of adventurous Krakelyn boys discovered the place and the treasures it contained, reporting it to my Father. Big mistake on their part.
I would’ve kept it a secret.
This is mine and Jude’s special place; a place we can duck the rigors of our home lives and just be together. Jude and I are the only ones allowed down here. It was only me, at first, but then I finally convinced (okay, begged) my old man to let Jude join me. We're always alone down here, in practice, but of course, there's always the chance of being spied upon by my Father’s men. The Deacons. We rarely actually see them but, every once in a while, we get a feeling; I guess you’d call it. We know when they’re watching us. That’s why whenever we take something from the beach, we do it discreetly, scouting the area before sneaking back with our treasure in tow.
Gifts from the Forerunners.
“So, what do you think the dream means?” Jude asks, this time leading me on as we descend the slope to the beach. Cool, pale sand engulfs my toes as I sink into it, my leather sandals providing zero cover.
Not that I mind.
“How should I know?” I reply. “It’s just a dream.”
“Ha! There’s the understatement of the century!” Jude bellows. “Just a dream? Conveniently you leave out the tendency for your dreams to come true!”
“No, they don’t!” I say with just a hint of annoyance. “That’s only happened, well, twice I guess. But those were just coincidences!”
Jude glares at me with his earthy brown eyes. “Was it coincidence that brought you to my house that morning and begged me not to go to work?” Not knowing what to say I just shrug, feeling stupid. “And was it a coincidence that there was a cave-in at the pit that day?” he finishes.
“You’re welcome,” I snipe at him, but only because I know he’s right.
“You know what I mean, Juno. You came to me that morning all in hysterics, telling me you had a bad feeling... From a dream! And I believed you, thank the gods!” I smile at that. It's one of the reasons I like Jude so much; he's always on my side, no matter what kind of craziness I may be spouting. He has my back like no other. He says: “An incident like that happening one time, well, yeah, it could be a coincidence. But twice? That’s more like something akin to a...”
“A mutant?” I finish for him, my indignation coming back ten-fold. Jude just nods his head. I grumble, “Why do you think we’ve never told anyone about it. Right?”
Jude frowns. “Of course not! Don’t worry, Juno, I’ve never told anyone about your prophetic dreams. And I don’t think you’re a mutant. I don’t think it has anything to do with a mutation–”
“Good,” I interrupt, lowering my voice to the best approximation of my Father’s: “Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live!”
Jude keeps talking as if I’d never cut him off: “I think it’s something else. Like a gift or something.”
I'm thrown off. “A gift? You mean, like from the gods?” I never took Jude to be the religious type, though I suppose we’ve never broached the topic much.
“Well, if you want to put it that way. Yeah, I guess. I mean, not in the dogmatic sense your Father believes in the gods, but there has to be something else out there besides us, Juno.”
“There is something,” I say, but I’m not looking at Jude.
I’ve stopped on the sand about ten feet from the high tide line. Jude follows suit, following my gaze. My heart is pounding a snare roll in my chest, the adrenaline heightening all my senses. I’m staring down the beach–way down the beach–because there’s something washed up on the shore. I can just make it out because it causes an irregular splash where the waves catch it.
“What is it?” Jude asks in a whisper.
“I... I dunno,” I say, hardly louder. We’re both frozen, daring not to move. What if it’s something good? What if it's something from the stories, like a cumpewter or an electric compass? Every history I’ve ever heard of the Forerunners flies through my brain in the intervening seconds. Every glorious, magical device that they were supposed to have created. And then my Father’s voice intercedes, overtaking the images: “They were so great, and yet, they failed. So utter and complete was their downfall that we have but fragments of their history and artifacts. The mutants of Everwinter are their creation, and because we are their ancestors we must continue to atone for their sins. We must keep the stock pure and never suffer a mutant to live, until the day comes when all lines are pure and the gods have forgiven us.”
By now, Jude and I are moving down the beach, though I hard
ly notice over my Father’s invasion of my psyche. The object is beginning to resolve itself into a square shape, and my mind automatically begins to compare it to other objects we’ve found on this beach: small, strange, humanoid sculptures made of a hard yet pliable material; torn and rusted metal sheets of a type unknown to anyone in Krakelyn; peculiar garments, emblazoned with unreadable symbology and fashioned of indefinite materials.
Mundane things, really.
Those kinds of things were sent to my Father’s men for processing and, if deemed safe, put up for auction. Those kinds of things Jude and I rarely kept for ourselves. But there were other things too. Scary and dangerous things, according to my Father. Things that were never meant to be discovered and had to be destroyed immediately. Whenever we found something like that, and we wanted to keep it, well, we had to be careful. Coveting objects of the Forerunners is considered a blasphemy.
The first thing I coveted was a book.
Yeah, just a plain old boring book.
Except that it wasn’t boring. I found it in a sealed container and the pages were perfect, smooth and glossy like glass. It contained pictures–hundreds of them–of strange and exotic cities of metal and crystal and fantastic conveyances. Cities of the Forerunners. There was text, but I couldn’t understand it. Every image took my breath away, every page a study in wonder and imagination. The people in it looked no different than my fellow citizens of Krakelyn! I looked at those pictures and I knew my Father was right about it having to be destroyed. If the people of Krakelyn saw those pictures, there’d be no telling what would happen. We were always told that the Forerunners were terrible. But from the pictures I saw, I just couldn’t believe that a people capable of building cities so fantastic, so wonderful, could be capable of destroying themselves. It didn’t seem fair to me. But I couldn’t let my Father know that.
I burned the book myself.
Since then, I’ve never found anything nearly half as wonderful as that book. But I have kept some things. We don't know what they are half the time, and I doubt my Father does either. In the beginning, we'd take every object we found before him for inspection and judgment, destruction or auction. This didn’t bother me so much, at first, until I found something truly interesting: a curious reflective surface set into an ornate gold frame. And I could see myself in it! Jude was equally stunned at the find. Of course, we’d seen our reflections before, in water buckets or windows or even chrome metalwork, but never this clearly, never this defined. It was like stepping out of my body and looking directly at myself. This reflecting glass was special, and I knew I had to petition my Father to keep it safe, to share its wonder with others. When I watched him grind it to dust beneath his boot heels less than an hour later, I knew I couldn’t let it happen again.
A week later, Jude and I smuggled home our first artifact: the book. My Father’s plan had blown up in his face. Did I mention why my Father gave me this job? My fascination with the Forerunners had him fretting over his only daughter blaspheming, and so when the beach was discovered, he thought that spending time around the desecrated objects of my fallen idols would help me see the light, so to speak. The ways of the Forerunners are the ways of death, remember?
Too bad it didn’t work, because...
Jude and I are running down the beach at a full gallop, racing toward the unknown object, our sandaled feet slapping against the hard packed sand near the water’s edge. The cool wind blows against the shaved sides of my head, my short red hair flailing like whips over the exposed skin. We’ve done this race a thousand times before; it’s become a sort of game whenever we spot an object on the beach.
First one there wins.
Jude is just slightly ahead of me. I can catch him up, if I really want to, but I might need that extra burst of energy at the end. Jude suddenly slips his sandals off midstride and, unencumbered, begins to pull away. I curse and he turns his head back at me, laughing, knowing his victory is inevitable. He turns back around and–
And slams to a dead stop on the sand.
I sear past him, turning my confusion laden face on his, seeing an expression of pure fear there.
“JUNO! STOP!” he shouts.
And I do. Sort of.
Just in time, I turn back around and see the object, a metal cube, on the sand about three feet ahead of me. I leap over it, coming down daintily on the other side, tip toeing to a stop and whirling on the spot. Jude is on the other side and he’s staring downward, but not at the metal box. It’s what’s around the box, pressed into the golden beach sand, that has him stunned.
It’s what caused him to stop the race.
I follow his gaze and see them too: footprints, leading away from the object, up the beach into the woods towards Krakelyn.
And each footprint has six toes.
“Thou shalt not suffer a mutant to live,” my Father’s voice echoes in the recesses of my mind.
PART I: EVERSUMMER