“Have you magicked the letters?” I asked.
Hemlock smiled proudly. “Yep. We have a proficient fae scribe with us and he made it so only the people I trust know how to get in and out.”
“Smart,” Emerald said and Hemlock beamed at her. She went to say something to Emerald, but as soon as the force field dropped, Emerald crossed over to the other side, leaving the cave before Hemlock could get a syllable out.
“Does she do that a lot?” Hemlock leaned towards us like we were buddies as she grumbled, eyes tracking Emerald.
“More than you care to know.” Ajax said before he pushed through us and followed Emerald.
Zayden just shrugged his shoulders and went. Hemlock turned to her group. “Tally, you take the lead and Rath, you take the back.” They formed the line while I walked over to Emerald and the guys, waiting until they started.
“Come, my green flower!” Hemlock waved to Emerald, but suddenly her face twisted at her own words. “Yuck! I hated that one. Nope. That one is off the nickname list.”
Emerald settled next to Hemlock with the three of us following close behind them as we started on the trail through the dunes. “What if you give up the name thing?” Emerald’s eyes shined with a plea, something that only comes out once in a blue moon.
Hemlock doesn’t seem phased by it in the least. “What do you mean?! We have to have a nickname for each other… we’re besties, duh!” She looked up at the sun and pointed at Emerald, shrugging her shoulders and making hand gestures like she was talking to the sun about her.
Emerald watched her for a second in confusion, before I saw her give up and take a breath. “So, tell us about the tribes.”
Hemlock looked down at Emerald as she tilted her head to the side. “Are you trying to leave me, bestie?” Her eyes shined, looking down at Emerald like she hoped she didn’t, that she was trying hard not to be sad or mad about it. Hemlock was weird like that. One minute she was fine and joking, the next minute serious and sad.
Her expression shocked most of us as Emerald stopped and turned to her, grabbing her shoulders as she turned to face her. “I am not trying to leave, but I would like to know how this place runs, what the politics are. I’m curious.” Then she let her go and kept walking, leaving Hemlock to be the one that had to catch up.
Hemlock ran up to her and punched her in the shoulder. “You’re such a smart bestie. Of course, you would want to know about this place. It just seems boring to me because most of us have been here since we were kids.” She rattled off.
Emerald looked at where she punched her, not flinching or cursing her, but she did call out, “You only get one of those every other day.” Which meant she let her punch her. Was Emerald softening up to her?
Hemlock winked at her. “Got it! I guess I have to save my bestie girl punches up, well, at least until we fight again. Then it’s unlimited, right?”
Emerald smiled at her, but it was more of a full teeth grin. “Right.”
Hemlock turned forward. “So, I told you that there are four tribes: the mountain men, the cruel ones, the cannibals, and the kids. Although we hate that they call us that, ‘the kids’, but it is what it is, right?” Hemlock picked up the pace as we started to get out of sand dune territory and got into more of a green vegetation area. It was almost like its own kind of natural border between two places.
“The cruel ones are exactly what they sound like. They are the criminals and rapists that are sent over here because they are not civilized enough for the human or fae worlds. They all banded together and have taken the land off to the right of ours, where the only entrance into this basin is. If anyone comes into here from there, they get a reality check of what it will be like living here real quick… if they live through what they do to them.” The plains of her face got tight as she clenched her jaw, anger sparking in her eyes before they left, and she smiled at us as she continued.
“Then we have the mountain man. He is the leader of a group of mixed fae & humans who have families and want a safe community to live in. They have taken up the land on the left side of us here.” She pointed to the green mossy covered land that had fog seeping out. “They chose this place because there are a lot of traps along the way and they have built into the side of the mountain their ‘city’ of sorts. We have a good relationship with them and often trade with them for resources.”
“Why didn’t you group up with them?” Ajax asked as he watched the fog roll around on the border ground we walked on.
Hemlock looked to the sky for a second, looking like she was collecting her thoughts as she said, “First, you need to know how we, ‘the kids’, came to be our own tribe before I answer that.”
Talican turned backward, saying something with his eyes when she smiled, somehow telling him she was fine. She looked at the ground as her voice got softer, less like the boisterous woman we have learned her to be. “Like I told you before, we were all brought here as kids because we had magic capabilities and came from families that were not important. The men who kidnapped us were slaver’s. They ran a huge trafficking ring here in Invitis. They would send children all over the world to help other nobles, or source certain children for the appetites of those in power and wanted to abuse their power over the weak.”
She took a breath, eyes staring down like she was lost in a memory. “We were all kept in cages, magical cages, that once they locked they would block your magic. They did a lot of horrible things to us, especially those of us that were just waiting for someone to want us. We were the disposable ones.” Her anger spiking as she spat the last part out.
Rath snuck up behind me, putting his hand gently on her shoulder. She stiffened at first before she saw him, and he gave her an encouraging smile. She lifted her hand to his and gave it a squeeze before she turned back to us. “One day, they didn’t lock my cage correctly and my magic started to tell me what to do. It told me how to kill the guard that was just outside the door. I lured him back into the dark room they kept us in before I shoved a sharp rock in his eye, straight back into his skull. Then I opened the cages and told the others how to get out, but I wasn’t done yet. My magic urged me to go find all the men and get rid of them.”
She stared off, smiling at the memory of what she had done. “I was only ten at the time but I choked one, slit another’s throat, blew up another two and then finally carved up the leader and burned down that horrible building. I wasn’t even upset with what I had done. It felt…”
“Right. Just. What needed to happen?” Hemlock’s eyes flicked to Emerald’s as she spoke, nodding as she gave her a small smile.
“As soon as I found a pond and cleaned myself up, all the kids that I saved came crawling out. They circled me and called me their leader. From then on, I battled adult after adult for the scrap of land that we call home, killing anyone that tried to take it from us.” She laughed at herself, “At first, I thought my gift was vengeance and death but I quickly learned, with Kisha’s help, what my magic really was, and when I reflected on that day, when my magic urged me to kill the rest of the men, I knew it was for survival. That they would just start the whole cycle back up again unless they were all eliminated.”
She looked back at Ajax. “So, back to your question. Why didn’t we group up with the mountain man and his people?” She let out a sigh, “When they found us, we tried. We really did, but they have a lot of rules on how their society is to be run and how you contribute to that society as a whole. It’s a well-oiled machine. They have regular food, are protected, and have little to no fights or skirmishes among their people, but when you have been caged, when everything has been stripped from you at a young age, things like that seem like a different kind of cage.
I will tell you what I told him. We are broken creatures, creatures that won’t go back to being controlled, told what to do or how to do it, all in the name of society’s betterment. We used to be wired that way, but when we broke free, when we got a taste of true freedom after being in a cage for so long, we realized you can’t live that way again. You can’t be a part of normal society because you have this animal, brokenness, anger, whatever you want to call it, inside of you now. It’s a living, breathing thing that will never go away. That will fight you if you try to put it back in its box. So we decided to make our own tribe, one that we can all live with and thrive under.” Talican came up to her side, looking at her like she was his world, when she wasn’t paying attention.
She moved us forward, shoving us to keep walking as she finished her story. “Even with our differences of what makes a society, we still, at our core, value the same things. Loyalty. Honesty. Strength. Endurance. There are things we agree on. For example, no rape is acceptable. You don’t steal from your people or your allies. You don’t murder unjustly. Those are the things that separate us from the Cannibals and the Cruel ones. Those tribes have banded together out of necessity, but really it’s every man or woman for themselves.”
