I didn’t get a chance to answer, because she was standing, grabbing my arm and pulling me up with her. I tried to crouch down again, but she wouldn’t let me andholy gods, she was strong. She dragged me all the way up to the stage and planted me directly beside Leader Graham, who shook my hand, and then her hand, before presenting us to the village people. They weren’t even clapping. They were sitting there, mouths hanging open, while metaphorical crickets chirped in the background.
Leader Graham frowned, having no idea what was going on, because he really didn’t get involved with the people he was supposed to be leading, unless it was to force us to do something he wanted. Or on the rare occasion that the Minateurs—the governing body of the sols—inspected our village.
He grabbed my shoulders and forced me forward a step. “Would you like to say something?” he asked me, in a way that didn’t really make it a question. “Thank your teachers, maybe?”
“Thanks, er, teachers,” I managed, my voice strangled.
His frown deepened, and he turned to Emmy, who stepped up beside me, clearing her throat confidently.
“We will not let this village down,” she promised, her strong voice carrying over everyone’s shock, and stirring them back into motion. “We will work harder than any other chosen dwellers, and we will return to this village with the blessings of the gods. That is a promise.”
It was such a short speech, but Emmy had been the one to deliver it, so it was enough to force a few cheers from the people. The rest were all still staring at me. Leader Graham seemed to give up on us, pointing to the side of the stage to dismiss us while he rambled on for a little bit longer about a few of the most legendary sols to ever ascend to Topia.
Emmy was laughing by the time the people cleared out. I meanreallylaughing. She was sitting on the stage, her knees brought up to cradle her face as she hung her head and veritablylost it. When she looked up, there were tears streaming down her face.
“I can’t believe our luck,” she told me. “I just can’t believe it. This was something I didn’t even dare to dream about. We’re going to Blesswood, Willa.Both of us. Together!” She started laughing again, and I started worrying about her sanity.
“Are you okay?” I asked, kneeling beside her, my hand on her back.
Immediately, she started sobbing.What the hell?
“I’ve been losing it inside my head,” she admitted between hiccupping sobs. “Ever since you got kicked out of school. You were so smart, you could have made it, but then … then it all came crashing down. I thought … I thought I’d have to say no, if I got chosen.”
I felt my own tears welling, then. I had to bite them back as I cuddled her into my arms. I stroked her silvery hair, muttering things that weren’t really things, likeyou’re fine, we’re fine, it’ll be fine.What I really wanted to say was that I was probably going to die. Literally. I was theleastappropriate person to throw into a school of elite sols. If I pissed one of them off enough, they would send me to one of the temples to be sacrificed to the gods. No joke. I was probably going to die.
“We’re fine,” I repeated. “This is going to be amazing. A whole new life. Just you wait, Emmy.”
Within one sun-cycle, Emmy and I were standing on the edge of our village, single bag in hand, preparing for our big moment. Preparing to walk from the only home we’d ever known. I was leaving behind a mother who probably wasn’t even aware that I’d been chosen; she’d barely been present or conscious since our selection. I wasn’t sure she understood what had happened. Maybe she didn’t even know that Emmy and I were leaving. That we would never return. Blesswood dwellers didn’t come back to the outlying villages, despite what Emmy had promised—nope, they were destined for bigger and better things. Like being hogtied and sacrificed to the Gods for accidently tripping and punching the sacred balls of one of the sacred sols. Don’t think it couldn’t happen, because I was up to five cases this life-cycle alone.Torture.That was what my future had in store for me. I was going to be tortured.
The previous afternoon, after the ceremony, I had told Emmy that I couldn’t wait. That it was going to be fantastic. The best ever. Sign me up for two lifetimes, and then for an encore. But when the sky grew dark and there was nobody around to see my false enthusiasm, the terrors grew particularly dark and vivid. Each nightmarish scene depicted one of the millions of ways that I might inflict disaster onto the sols. Onto Blesswood.
I tried to tell myself that it would be fine. That the academy had been coasting along with a perfect reputation for too long anyway, and that a little tarnish would do it some good. Spice things up. As long as they didn’t use my blood to try and buff the stain …
Crowds swelled around us as we waited by the oldest piere tree for our transport cart to arrive. This huge, gnarled, ancient thing represented the most northern point of our village, where the two dirt roads intersected. One leading to Blesswood in the north, and the other leading to the last vestiges of civilisation in Minatsol. Beyond that … nobody really knew. Not a single person had ever travelled any further south than the last village and actuallyreturned; and none of us were any wiser as to what lay in that most mysterious part of Minatsol. More death, I was sure. Or maybe it was paradise, and that was why nobody ever came back. The thing was … that was a pretty big gamble:death or paradise?Only two villages lay further from Blesswood than ours, and both struggled to grow from the land. Water was scarce, but their leaders had expressed on more than one occasion how grateful they were not to have me, so that was something.
Minatsol was set out in a ring-like pattern. The very centre was Blesswood. It was there that the most fertile of life was. Each circle that extended out grew worse and worse. We were in the seventh ring, and there were nine in total, that we knew of. Beyond that was the south road, and the gamble of death or paradise.
Glancing up, I let the sway of red and green-tinged leaves soothe me. We were in the middle of the hot season, but despite a scarcity of water, this old tree continued to provide shade and shelter. As the folk stories told it, this tree was from the timebefore. No one liked to talk much of the time before. I’m not sure any of the stories really trulyrememberedthe true beauty of our world. Apparently, all of Minatsol—not just Blesswood—had once resembled Topia; which was said to be the most beautiful of all worlds. Not that any of us knew about the other worlds. We just assumed that they were out there. Somewhere. Like Topia.
“You ready for this, Will?” Emmy gripped her bag loosely, her other hand wound tightly through mine.
“How long do you think it’ll take mum to realise we’re gone?” I continued to scan the crowd. It was common for the village as a whole to send the Blesswood recruits off, but there was no sign of my dirty-blond, tired-faced, red-eyed matron.
Emmy’s silver hair slid across her cheek as the slightest of breezes lifted the strands. She looked extra pretty, having taken time and care with her appearance. I had worn my good shirt, and it was even mostly clean, except for a little sooty patch on the back from where I had accidently sat in the fireplace.
“Probably around the time she realises that her medical kits are full, and that my dinners have run out,” Emmy replied.
Yeah, my mother used those medical kits almost as much as I did, because believe it or not, therewasanother person out there capable of causing as much chaos as I did. She wasn’t born that way, though—not like me. She got there with the help of alcohol and low morals.
Noises swelled in the crowds, and I could see the transport cart slowly moving toward us. Yellow, ochre-coloured dirt kicked up beneath the four spoked wheels. It was believed that within the sacred walls of Blesswood, they had transport systems able to move without the help of bullsen—the huge, black, pointy-headed beasts that now pulled the approaching cart. It wasn’t calledBlesswoodfor no reason, you see. The gods gifted them with magic and technology of the calibre that dwellers could only dream of. That must have been where the book on tar had come from: from a place where the reality was far beyond even our brightest sun-cycles.
Emmy started dragging me to the now-waiting transport, her grip on my hand tight with nervous energy. People reached out and touched us as we left. Dwellers were superstitious by nature and believed that these were the actions which would garner favour with the gods. This was why we served the sols the way we did—I mean, other than the fact that the sols would probably burn our villages to the ground if we didn’t. We wanted the gods to reward us, to see our use, to recognise our people. So when any of the dwellers were chosen to serve the sols, the others always made a show of their support. They hoped thateventuallythe dwellers would find themselves recognised as more than just the bottom rung of sentient life in our world.
I had never reached out to touch any of the previous dwellers, because I assumed differently. I was the bottom feeder of the bottom feeders, and if my eighteen life-cycles had taught me anything, it was that nothing ever changed. Dwellers would always be worthless to the world, and I would always be worthless to the worthless.
As if I’d summoned the accident by thought alone, my feet tangled in a rough section of brush by the side of the dirt road, and before Emmy could right my balance—no doubt the reason she’d chosen to utilise her crazy, muscle-man strength and manhandle me in the first place—the bag shot from my hand and hit the side of the cart. A cart which bore the very regal crest of Blesswood; the mark of the creator, the original God. His mark was a staff, with a spear-head made of silver. Always silver, because silver was the colour of the Creator. I’d heard, once, that all the gods were defined by certain colours, but the only part of that particular lesson that had actually stuck with me had been the fact that Death’s colour was black. It just seemed so … predictable.Where’s the creativity, gods?I didn’t see why Death couldn’t have pink. Or purple. What if he liked sparkles?
I was distracted from my thoughts as my bag dropped heavily into the dirt beside the cart, billowing up a plume of dust. An actual gasp was let out en-mass as the shock of what I’d just done wore off.Come on, people.They couldn’t be surprised, right? Did they think that by just being chosen, I’d suddenly emulate the grace of a sol? Well, that would have been nice, but I was a pragmatic sort of dweller. The clumsy curse was going nowhere, although I did take a moment to be grateful that I’d neither killed anyone, nor disabled the vehicle in a way that would render it completely useless.
