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  “I’m here now, Fiona. Shh. I’m sorry, so sorry,” said Elliot.

  “Elliot?”

  “Yes, it’s me. Don’t worry; he’s dead.”

  “You killed him.”

  “Of course. He was trying to hurt you.”

  “But, the guard—you’ll be punished. You’ll be executed.”

  He didn’t answer. He stroked my hair away from my face. The wetness of my tears caused it to cling, and he smiled crookedly as he picked strands away from my cheek.

  “We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.”

  “This is my fault. I shouldn’t have allowed you to choose me. I knew he would try to retaliate if I didn’t choose him. He said as much.”

  “It isn’t your fault. He wasn’t a reasonable man.”

  I crossed my arms and snuggled deeply into his embrace. It was odd but comforting. Very rarely did anybody touch me.

  “You’re all right, aren’t you? Should I get an attendant?”

  My cheeks burned. “No, I’m fine. He didn’t . . . succeed.”

  We sat together for what seemed like an hour or more. I didn’t want to break the bond his arms had on me.

  Eventually, he spoke. “At dark, we’ll leave. All right?” He released me and rolled Orion’s body to the edge of the hut to lay in the shadows. He threw one of our bedding blankets over him.

  He kneeled in front of me. “We’ll wait for them to bring dinner. If we are planting when they come in, they’ll leave quickly without looking around. They won’t see him. Then, we’ll eat dinner and leave.”

  “Planting?” My voice rose unnaturally as I said it. “You want to plant?”

  “We don’t have to actually be—” He trailed off. “I’ll make sure that they don’t see the body. And when they’ve left us, we’ll go.”

  “But where will you go?” Even to my own ears, my voice was grinding.

  “Away. Somewhere else. And not just me. We.”

  “Why would I leave? I can’t just go away.”

  “We can’t move the body. If they find it in here with you, they’ll claim you were involved. You’ll be punished, too.”

  “But, I didn’t do anything! He attacked me.”

  Elliot sighed. “Orion’s older brother is the leader of the queen’s true opposition. They’ll make sure you share the blame.”

  “Then, we need to get rid of the body. We can move it out of the village when it gets dark.”

  “We’d never get away with that, Fiona,” he said, shaking his head. “How would we explain what we’re doing when someone comes along? We can’t just carry something as large as him out of here.”

  My shoulders rolled forward, and I felt defeat wash over me. “Where would we go?”

  His eyes lit up. “I know a place. I think we’ll be safe there.”

  ◆◆◆

  After darkness fell, Elliot put his plan into motion. When he heard the attendant outside the hut, he went to the door and took the tray, breaking the servant’s view into the hut.

  “The lady needs a moment,” he told the attendant. The attendant only grunted. They had little incentive to care about what the people they served were doing.

  “Come on. Get your cloak on,” he said to me.

  This brought to mind a problem—clothing. Except for our cloaks, we had none.

  “What about my clothes? And my things?” I asked. After I’d been assigned to the fields, most of my possessions had been stripped. But, I knew they were packed away, waiting for me or whoever took my place. “If we stop at the supply hut near the center well, I should be able to get them.”

  “No,” he said, squeezing my hand. “We’ll follow the shortest path out. We can’t risk being seen by anyone.”

  “But, I’m naked,” I squeaked.

  “As am I,” he said. He smiled. “I rather like it this way, don’t you?”

  “No,” I said, digging my heels in as he pulled me towards the door. “I won’t leave without something to wear.”

  “We’ll pick up supplies on the way out,” he conceded. “We just aren’t going to the center well. There’re too many people around there, even after dark.”

  He pulled aside the cloth covering the doorway a sliver and put his eye to the gap. He stood very still and slowed his breath. Then, he turned and nodded at me before pulling me out into the night.

  I could hear voices and the murmurs of planting from the nearby huts, but nobody was outside. We walked around to the back of our hut. The village was arranged in an orderly grid, and he crossed the path behind our hut to the back of the next hut, making his way towards the edge of the village. He pulled me along behind him as he moved.

  He drew up short, and I bumped into his back. He turned around and gathered me into a kiss. With one hand, he grabbed my leg and swung it around behind him so that my bare skin was visible outside his cloak. I pushed against his chest, but he persisted.

  “Hey, what are you doing over there?!” someone shouted. I could hear footsteps coming towards us. I pushed harder, but Elliot seemed unfazed.

  He broke from my lips and said, without turning, “Mind your own damn business.” Then, he resumed his kiss.

  Whoever had approached laughed. “Wouldn’t want to interfere with that.”

  Elliot broke away and listened as the footsteps faded into the distance. “All right, let’s go.”

  We continued to the edge of the village. He led me to a hut that appeared uninhabited, and he went inside. He came back out with a large satchel and a small one. He handed me the smaller one. It wasn’t heavy.

  “Put it on,” he said. I put my arms through the straps and hefted its slight weight onto my back.

  He took my hand. “Ready?”

  I shook my head. Tears came to my eyes, and I blinked them back.

  “I promise that sometime, we’ll come back,” he said.

  “We will?”

  “Yes. Definitely.” He tugged at my arm. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him. I hoped he meant to keep his promise. I hoped we wouldn’t be caught. And I hoped Orion’s brother stayed the hell away from the queen.

  Chapter 4

  We walked deep into the night. Now and then, Elliot would stop and listen with an intense expression on his face. Whenever he did that, he would change direction when we began walking again.

  “What are you listening for?” I asked after he had done this several times.

  “The queen’s guard dogs. If we haven’t heard them, then nobody knows we’re gone. Yet.”

  I shrugged. “The dogs won’t hurt me. I grew up petting them and feeding them treats.”

  He laughed. “The dogs are well trained. Given the right command, they would tear your throat out. They don’t care that you’ve been kind in the past.”

  I stepped on something sharp. “Ow,” I said. I lifted my foot up, trying to check it for injury. But in the dark, it was difficult to tell.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I stepped on something. I think I might be bleeding.”

  He turned me around and opened the satchel on my back. He rummaged around for a moment, and then handed me a pair of sandals over my shoulder.

  “These ought to fix that.”

  “But—”

  “Just put them on,” he interrupted me. “We don’t have time to bandage a scratch.”

  I slid the sandals on and tied them. They fit well. “How did you know they would fit?”

  “It’s my trade,” he said. He put a hand on my shoulder and urged me on. “We’ve got to find a place to hide by dawn. They’ll definitely know we’re missing when the attendant serves breakfast.”

  We moved on, and despite my injured foot, we moved even faster than we had before. Twice, we waded through creeks. Once, we even climbed a tree so that we could jump onto the edge of a nearby cliff face.

  “How do you know where to go? This feels aimless.”

  “It isn’t. We’re going in circles.”

  “Wha
t?” I stopped walking. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “Ah, I can see you still don’t trust me. I was joking. We’re just trying to get out of the range of the dogs. The handlers will only venture so far from the village before they’ll turn back.”

  “That’s stupid. Why would they do that?”

  “They’re afraid of who else they might encounter.”

  “You mean like bears and snakes?”

  “No,” he said. He helped me navigate over a large boulder. “I mean people.”

  I laughed. “There aren’t any people out here.”

  He stopped and looked at me. “You’ve led a very sheltered life.”

  “What do you mean? If there are other people, why don’t we ever see them?”

  “Because they don’t want to be seen.”

  “That can’t be right.”

  He shook his head. “You can’t believe everything they’ve told you, Fiona. There are other people out there. You don’t know about them because we’re afraid of them.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  He stopped walking and put a hand on my shoulder. “Fiona, what doesn’t make any sense is why we follow a queen blindly, ignoring the past and doing what we’re told without question.”

  A prickle went up my neck. He was telling the truth. “How do you know this?”

  He dropped his arm and motioned for me to follow him. We resumed our hike away from the village. “The queen—she is descended from your great-great-grandmother, the original leader, Monica. You know that, of course.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, where did we come from before her? We didn’t just sprout up like cornstalks.”

  “I—I don’t know. It never occurred to me that we could have come from anywhere but the queen mother.”

  “Right. That’s what they want you to think. That the original leader—the queen mother, as you call her—was basically a goddess. That’s what the current queen wants everyone to believe. Because it makes it easy for her. You see?”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t really sure how having a goddess in the family history helped matters.

  He shook his head. “You don’t see. Why pretend that you do?”

  “I just don’t know what to believe.”

  “Well, believe this—we came from somewhere. And there are others like us. Other people. And there’s a reason we’re afraid of encountering them.”

  “Why?”

  “The queen mother didn’t start out as a queen. She lived with all the others, underground. They were confined there, for safety. But at some point, they didn’t want to be confined. So, they sent some people out to test the waters. They wanted to know if they could survive aboveground.

  “When the people underground were satisfied that it was safe, they started sending more people out. But, they were afraid of the original people they’d already sent. They thought those people would be hostile because they’d been abandoned outside without warning.”

  He stopped and listened for a moment, then shoved aside some low branches and changed direction.

  “So, the group that came out second were supposed to kill the originals and their children. But, things went awry; the people became attached to each other and weren’t following the instructions from underground. The queen mother, Monica, decided to follow instructions. And she killed off most of the test subjects. Then, she took the remainder of the second group and met up with the underground people, and they established a new village together.”

  “This is a very complicated story.”

  “Yes, well, it isn’t finished. The underground people ruled via a council voted into place by the majority vote. The council had maybe a dozen members at the time. But, Monica wanted to lead. She thought she had earned it. So, she took power from the council and declared herself queen. Anyone who defied her was killed on the spot.”

  I shuddered. Could I really be related to such a person?

  “Unfortunately, Monica didn’t kill all the originals. And a few of the second group had grown so loyal to the originals that they left her group and joined them. Their descendants still survive today, and their numbers are growing.”

  I peered at his profile, trying to discern if he was making up stories. “How do you know all this?”

  “Simple, really. I’m descended from one of the council. And though it’s forbidden, we have a family tradition of passing on the history.”

  We walked on in silence. I thought about what he’d said. Could all that be true about the queen mother? I tried to think back over every lesson I’d had concerning the history of the village. None of Elliot’s story rang true, but it seemed too crazy for him to have imagined it all.

  Through the trees ahead, I caught a glimpse of the lightening sky. Dawn was approaching. We had maybe three more hours before our absence was discovered. Longer, if nobody noticed the body.

  “Are we almost there?” I asked. Seeing that the sun was rising brought attention to my weariness.

  “Yes, only a few more miles,” he said.

  I wanted to demand that we stop and rest but didn’t want to seem soft. I needed to occupy my mind, so I resumed our earlier conversation. “How do you know their numbers are growing?”

  “Huh?” he asked, stepping over a fallen log.

  “You said before that the other surviving people—that there are more of them.”

  “Oh. Right. I know that because I’m friends with one.”

  “You’re friends? With our enemy?”

  “I never said they were an enemy. I said, the queen is afraid of them. That isn’t the same thing.”

  “Are we going to see this friend now?” I tried to hide the alarm in my voice, but he heard it.

  “Take it easy. No. That isn’t the plan. We’re going to the original village. There are some ruins there, where we can hide and rest during the day.”

  “Won’t they know to look for us there?”

  “No. I doubt anyone from our village knows where it is. Ray showed it to me. We hang out there together sometimes.”

  “But, we’ve gone so far from the village. How can you go there and not be missed? You would have to be away overnight.”

  He glanced at me sideways and then pressed his lips into a thin line. “My father is a hard man to get along with,” he said after a long pause.

  “You mean, you ran away?”

  “No. He kicked me out.”

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know. Why is the sky blue? Do the birds sing for pleasure? He just did.”

  “So, you’d just leave the village, and go . . . where?”

  “Around. I ventured far enough from the village once to stumble upon Ray when he was out hunting. Once we got over trying to fight each other, we got to be friends. He showed it to me because he likes to go there.”

  “And is he going to be upset that you’re taking me there? Is it a secret place?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t think about that. But, it’s too late to think about it now; we’re here.”

  He pushed aside some vines. In the dim light, I could see that the vines were covering a partial wall. In the middle of the wall was a door-shaped hole, though it was rough around the edges now. He ushered me inside and let the vines fall back. The door and the roof were gone but there was a fireplace in the corner, almost like the one I’d seen at Elliot’s cabin. Weeds sprouted up in tufts from the floor.

  Elliot dropped his bag in the corner opposite the fireplace. Logs from above had fallen partially inward, and with the vine growth over the top, it provided a shelter of sorts. He took my bag from me. He withdrew pants and a shirt for himself, then handed it back to me.

  “You’ll probably want to dress yourself. In case Ray shows up.”

  I looked in the bag. The sun had risen enough for it to be light outside, but the walls of the cabin blocked any direct rays.

  “Is there something in here I can wear?” I asked, pawing through the bag.
In the dim light, it all looked like his clothing.

  “What’s left in there is what I brought for you. They belonged to my younger sister. You’re about the same height.”

  I pulled out what remained and turned away from him, pulling on the pants under my cape. I had to pull the drawstring tight, since they were too large around the waist. I untied my cape and put my arms in the sleeves of the shirt before flinging the cape off as I pulled the shirt over my head.

  “Interesting technique,” he said.

  “I learned it in the field-hand bunks. They don’t get any privacy at all.”

  “That must have been hard for you.”

  I nodded but didn’t comment further. It’d actually been much more than hard. I’d lost everything I’d ever known in a single day – privacy, rank, possessions, freedom. It had all been taken because I’d failed to bear a child in the given amount of time.

  Elliot spread his cape over some moss in the corner and curled up against the wall. He patted the ground beside him. “We need to get some rest. Lay down here, and we’ll use your cape as a blanket.”

  I settled on the cape beside him and draped my cape over us. I’d barely curled up before I fell into a deep, welcomed sleep.

  ◆◆◆

  I woke later to quiet talking nearby. I felt behind me, but Elliot wasn’t there. I opened my eyes and found him talking with another man. They were hunched over something in front of the fireplace. I tried to listen to what they were saying, but their voices were too quiet.

  I sat up.

  “Hey, there she is. Come on over, Fiona. I want to introduce you to someone.”

  I untangled myself from the cloaks and stood up. My too-loose pants threatened to fall down, and I clutched them at my waist. I approached the pair, and as I did, they stood up.

  “Ray, I’d like you to meet Fiona. Fiona, this is Ray.”

  I reached out with my hand, and he grasped my wrist. I tried to mimic his motion but fumbled.

  “Pleasure to meet you,” he said. He smiled, and his eyes crinkled shut. His teeth flashed white between his lips.

  “And also you,” I said.

  He released my wrist and sat back down.

  “Please,” he said, motioning towards the ground between them.