Chapter 2
My eyes snap open, and immediately my heart batters against my ribcage. I scramble to a sitting position, my eyes surveying the clearing. Tears burn and blur my vision as I squint at the blindingly bright light all around me. The sun is high in the sky, the heat blazing. I realize I have slept for hours not minutes, and a sense of deep regret fills me. A good portion of the day has been lost, wasted really. Time spent sleeping that should have been spent training. I exhale loudly, pinching the bridge of my nose as I do so. This day has been marked by squander; first the boart meat, and now this.
In my periphery, I see that June is still sleeping. I am grateful she is okay, that she is still by my side, despite being annoyed that time, a precious commodity, has been lost. I take a deep breath, calming myself before I wake June. I do not want her to see my frustration. After all, it is not her fault. None of it is her fault.
I twist my body and look at her. Her hair is fanned out all around her, a riot of golden tendrils coiling around flower stems. I hesitate for a moment then tap her arm.
“June. June, wake up,” I say as I jiggle her shoulder. “June,” I try a bit louder.
June whips her head in my direction, her eyes wide and bloodshot. “What, what is it?” she asks concernedly. She looks dazed, still half-asleep.
“We both fell asleep,” I tell her, and she looks at me strangely, as if to say, “No kidding.” I shake my head then add, “We slept a long time.”
She sits up quickly and I follow her gaze as it sweeps the meadow. Little by little, what I have said registers. A frown creases her face.
“Oh no, I’m so sorry,” she starts to say, but I interrupt her.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, June. This is my fault. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep.”
“No, it’s not your fault. Please don’t blame yourself,” she says, and touches my arm lightly. “It’s a beautiful summer day and you were tired.” She tries to excuse my negligence, but I have made a mistake and cost us valuable hours of daylight.
I ignore her attempt to let me off easy. “Half the day has been wasted. We never should have rested in the meadow in the first place.” I do not temper my aggravation. “And now, we need to hurry to our spot and train.” I raise my voice, allowing some of the irritation I am feeling to slip out.
Her face wilts and her eyes glaze with tears.
“June,” I start. “I didn’t mean to sound so angry. I am not angry with you, just the situation, okay?” She seems unconvinced. She tips her chin up and swallows hard, blinking feverishly. “Come on, please don’t be sad. I am a jerk,” I say, and know it is true. I have hurt the one person in this world I share my life with, the one person I love.
Regret and self-loathing knot in my stomach. June is only eight. I should not have taken a sharp tone with her. It does not matter that my anger was not directed at her. I should know better. My father always did. He was calm. He would be disappointed in me if he knew I upset June.
A cool hand on my hot skin yanks me from my brooding. “I am sorry I’m such a baby, that I cry when I’m upset. I wish I were more like you,” June says.
I clamp my eyes shut. “No, you don’t,” I say. I want to tell her she is perfect, that she is better than I could ever be, but my voice chokes when I try to speak. I open my eyes then look away from her and chew my lower lip, gulping hard against the stinging pain in my throat. But thin arms encircle my shoulders.
“You’re not a jerk,” June says into my neck as she squeezes tightly. “I love you.”
I hug her back and tell her I love her too. I do not let go until her grip relaxes. I don’t know why she forgives me, but I am grateful for it. She is the only thing that keeps me going. I stand and offer my hand to help her up; the time to leave is upon us. She follows me wordlessly, away from the field and back into the denser part of the forest. We walk for several minutes, passing our cave, and continue until we reach an area my father constructed years ago, where trees have been stripped of their branches and trimmed, their bark removed so that the hard, inner wood is exposed. Targets have been fashioned out of stretched animal hides and stained with berry extract for spear-throwing practice, and wooden swords have been designed so that June and I can spar without hurting each other. This is our training area, where we prepare to fight for our food, to fight animals; to fight for our lives.
A quick look at the sky reveals the sun is sinking fast. Little time is left to spar. I move toward our weapons. The swords are hidden. A large boulder sits in front of a thicket of thorny bushes. Under the thorny bushes, our swords wait, wrapped in an animal pelt. They are left in the woods, concealed by the bushes. To any creature roaming about, the pelt and swords would go unseen. But June and I know better. I drop to my knees and reach for the skin, scraping my forearm as I hurriedly drag it. I unroll it and toss one sword to June and keep the other for myself. June catches hers clumsily, and then clutches it in her hands.
Though the weapon is light in my hands, such is not the case for my sister. The small muscles in June’s upper body bulge as she wields the wooden sword and takes several practice swings. I know she is straining, but I must see beyond what is in front of me. I must look into the future, a future that requires her to be able to defend herself.
I advance several steps and June and I begin. June uses a small sword I practiced with when I was little. I now use the one my father did when he was alive. It feels different in my hands than the one I keep on me at all times, perhaps because it lacks the heft of its metal counterpart, or because it lacks the finely honed tip. Either way, these swords suit our purpose, which is to exercise.
The wood of our weapons makes loud clacking sounds as they collide with each other. When sparring with my sister, I exercise a degree of restraint. Our sessions are for her benefit only. After we finish, she rests, and I must sharpen my skills with the poles my father made.
My father designed all that we see before he died. I practiced with him throughout the years for more hours than I could count. I loved sparring with him. He trained me, fostering what he called my ‘gift’ until I could best him in a match. Of course, the gift he referred to was my ability to swing a sword. He said I was born with it. I think it is a result of hard training. Perhaps it is a combination of the two. Whatever it is does not matter. All I am certain of is that I must continue practicing, keep my muscles strong and my reflexes quick. The poles are helpful, but lack where instinct is concerned. Subtleties are missing. A being must be read when fighting; at least that’s what my father always told me. I was able to beat my father by the time I was fifteen, always anticipating his next move, sidestepping it before acting faster. He was a great warrior and was proud that I would win. He never held back and he was never embarrassed. I miss having an adult to spar with, someone stronger than me. I miss sparring with my father. I wish he were still alive. But he is gone, and I am responsible for June’s survival, as well as my own.
I keep that important point in mind every time I train with her. My goal is to build her endurance and strength, her speed and instinct. I need to build her confidence. The way she hefts and swings her sword screams that she is not comfortable doing so. I worry about her. We have been working for months and her improvement has been minimal.
In my heart I believe she should have existed centuries ago, back when children her age played with dolls and went to places called schools to learn about all kinds of subjects. Sometimes I think a cosmic joke of some sort has misplaced her here instead of an era when she could have been safe and healthy and happy.
The tension in my chest pulls, tightening painfully, when I look at her and imagine her wearing dresses the color of wildflowers.
My insides feel as if they are coiling like a snake readied to strike. I focus the pain, focus the anger, and take it out on the poles. Extending my arms, I swing the wooden bla
de, slicing through the air with a whoosh before it strikes wood, scoring it. I continue, repeating the motion, but alternating between my left and right arm, swinging high and low, until my skin is slick with sweat and my throat burns. My entire body throbs to a single rhythm and I feel alive, truly alive.
Blood rushes through by body, drilling against my skin so hard I feel I could burst, but I do not stop. I swerve and twist as I cleave the air. I must be prepared in case they find us. Other beings live beyond the woods we call home. They rule the world and will kill us if they find us. If they knew humans were living deep in the forest, that June and I exist, they would come for us.
They used to be human, but have evolved into something far different. They now call themselves Urthmen, and they hate us in a way I do not understand. They want nothing more than to drive humanity to extinction. They may have already been successful for all I know, except for me and my sister. I watched them kill hundreds when I was younger, my neighbors, my friends, my mother. Back then, we lived in a village with others like us. My father, sister, and I were the only survivors. My father fled to the forest with us, knowing that the Urthmen do not venture deep into the woods, for they are not the most dangerous species roaming the planet. Lurkers are. They live in the forest. They only come out at night. And Lurkers would feast on the flesh of Urthmen as quickly as they would humans.
The Urthmen live in the cities that used to be inhabited by humans, before our kind fell at their hands. They rarely enter the woods by day. Doing so at nighttime would mean certain death. Even Urthmen fear the forest. The only reason they would ever leave the comfort of their communities would be to hunt humans.
I used to ask my father why the Urthmen hate us so much. He said they fear our intelligence and they resent that we are unchanged by the War of 2062. Recalling tales of the War of 2062 sends a shiver down my spine. My father explained to me what happened to our kind, that we had brought this misery on ourselves. Humans from different countries had warred with one another. A powerful chemical virus had been created by a Middle Eastern country, and released on the people of North America. The attack caused the leaders in America to launch nuclear weapons in retaliation, destroying much of the world.
North America, where I live, is the only place where life is thought to still exist. It has been ravaged by chemical warfare, but life has continued. I do not know for certain whether the rest of the world is inhospitable, but judging from the stories I’ve heard, I do not see how it would be possible. The only reason many humans survived the war in the first place resulted from the mass underground shelters that had been created when the threat of war seemed imminent.
Bomb shelters, as they were aptly named, were created for important people and rich people to take refuge in. Hundreds of thousands of the rich and important people lived there for decades until their supplies ran out and forced them to come aboveground. By then, they figured the diseases had cleared and that they were safe. The diseases were gone, but something much worse awaited them.
When they surfaced, they were met by grotesque, distorted versions of human beings, abominations, who had gone mad from the chemicals and diseases. Those abominations butchered any humans they came across, who had hidden and were unaffected by illness. Some humans managed to get away, and they hid.
Two hundred years later, the offspring of those affected, the abominations, have evolved. They look much as they had then. They are grotesquely distorted versions of humans, and their intelligence is far lesser than a human. They call themselves the Urthmen. They now rule the world. And even after all these years have passed, after watching the fall of humanity and the rise of their kind, the Urthmen’s hatred of humans remains.
I haven’t seen Urthmen since the massacre at the village I used to live in. Thinking of them makes me pause and look at June.
“Come, let’s go again,” I say between pants.
“But we just finished a little while ago,” she protests.
I beg her with my eyes to stop and she does. She reluctantly stands and picks up her wooden sword. We spar again, only this time I push her harder, challenging her, demanding with my weapon that she defend herself more intensely. Her posture becomes more rigid, her strikes more purposeful. Her lip curls over her teeth, and in her eyes there’s a steely resolve I’ve never seen before. She is suddenly focused, pushing herself to her limits. She is using her speed and agility to her advantage, darting all around me as she attacks unrelentingly. Pride mushrooms inside of me.
I smile broadly when she lowers her weapon to catch her breath. “I am proud of you, June,” I say, and her spine lengthens. She is barely able to stifle the grin creeping across her cheeks. “Oh, go ahead and smile,” I tell her. “You should be happy. You have made tremendous progress.”
June’s eyes crinkle with her smile. “Really? You mean it?” she says, and cannot keep the excitement from her tone.
“Absolutely,” I nod. “Maybe we should goof off more often,” I add, and arc an eyebrow at her.
Her lips part briefly before snapping shut, as if she is not sure of the correct response. I was being sarcastic, making fun of myself, really. But she is uncertain.
“Come on, give me your sword. We are done for the day,” I tell her.
She hands over her weapon and I wrap both in the animal pelt and return them to the space beneath the bush.
As we walk back to our cave, June comments on the sky. “Wow,” she marvels. “It’s so pretty.”
The sun has just about set and bands of pink and lavender streak the sky. June has only seen a handful of twilight skies. We seldom stay out this late. Danger prowls when the sun goes down.
With that threat in mind, I link my arm through June’s and pull her close, quickening my pace. She rushes to keep up with me, and we make it to the cave just as darkness falls.
As soon as we are inside, we roll the boulder in place and secure it with brush and logs. We eat some of our cooked boart meat, then I light a small candle made from beeswax. June settles into her sleep sack for the night.
“Avery?” she calls as I roll out my bedding.
“Yes?”
“Will you tell me some stories Dad used to tell us at bedtime?”
“Of course,” I answer as my mind’s eye produces an image of my father sitting right where I am, tucking us in for the night and sharing stories of years long-passed, stories his father told him that his grandfather had shared.
I lie beside her and place the candle between us. “Once, long ago, people like us, human beings, lived in big, sprawling structures made of wood and brick. They were called houses. Usually, only one family lived there, parents and children.” I pause and look at June. Her sack is pulled up to her chin, her fingers curled around the edge. Her eyes are fixed on mine as she waits for me to continue. “Inside the houses, they had little rectangles on the walls with knobs at their center. When they moved the knob, lights would turn on.”
June laughs at what I’ve just said; the idea so far-fetched it is funny.
“The rectangles were called light switches and they were pretty much what their name stated: switches that made light shine.”
June covers her eyes with her hands and shakes her head.
“And the light switches were not alone. There were other rectangular things called outlets. People would plug tools into these outlets and they would work by themselves.”
“Like the picture boxes?” June asks, and drops her hands, her eyes lighting up with interest.
“Yes, people plugged their picture boxes into the outlets. Picture boxes were like magic. They would show miniature people inside of them that could speak loud enough for everyone to hear. The people inside would perform and tell stories.”
June claps her hands over her face again and laughs. “That can’t be true,” she says through giggles. “There wasn’t any such thing!”
r /> “No, there was,” I say. “Dad’s father told him, and his father before him. It is all true.”
She lowers her hands and rolls her eyes. “Wow,” she breathes.
“Oh, but there’s more,” I continue. “There also used to be friendly animals that lived in people’s houses and they were treated like family.”
“No way! Now I know you’re making that up!” she snorts and is overcome with silliness again.
“I am not making it up,” I say and can’t help but chuckle softly, mostly at her delight. “They were called dogs and they would lick people’s faces and let people pet them. They would even sleep with the people they lived with in a big, cozy bed. Great-grandpa told Dad that some people had clothes for their dogs.” I watch as June doubles over clutching her belly in hysterics.
The notion of an animal living with a person is preposterous. Mammals are ferocious creatures to be avoided. Most only come out at night, as their eyes are no longer able to handle daylight. The thought of one licking anyone’s face is inconceivable.
When June’s laughter calms, I continue telling stories until her eyes struggle to stay open. After her eyes close, I blow out the candle. The cave is plunged in darkness, but I am not afraid. The dark of our cave is familiar, it is safe. Beyond our stone walls is another story entirely though, one that does not include friendly animals, magic picture boxes, houses, or families. It is a world of violence and chaos; a world of danger.
I fight to push the never-ending risk surrounding us to the back of my mind. I know it will be waiting for me when I wake. But right now I need rest. I close my eyes and feel sore muscles relax before all the terror stills and sleep takes hold.