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by Jaymin Eve
Wait a moment … “You have no idea what a barge is?” I asked, astounded. “You know everything. I don’t even bother trying to learn stuff myself, I just ask you and you give me the answer.”
“Yeah, that’s probably going to have to change,” she advised, a laugh riding her words. “But I’ve never read about barges, and nobody has ever mentioned them to me.”
“Wow. Guess you’re not all that smart after all. Guess you’re kinda silly. You feel silly right now, don’t you? You feel a little embarrassed, because you don’t know what a barge is?”
“No.” She smirked, grabbing my arm and pulling me after Jerath.
She’d gotten into the habit of dragging me everywhere since they announced our names at the selection ceremony. She probably thought that I’d have a panic attack, steal a bullsen, and high-tail it as far away from Blesswood as possible at any moment. The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I didn’t tell her that. It was too funny to watch her watching me out of the corner of her eye all the time.
We reached the first group of dwellers, all stuck together in groups of two. I wasn’t sure how many dweller settlements there actually were in Minatsol—Emmy had told me once, but I’d forgotten. Either way, the number of dwellers gathered to the edge of the platform rising over the water hinted at a substantial dweller population. We all turned as one unit at the sound carrying over the water—like a horn, but long and drawn-out. There was a massive, floating platform coming toward us. Moving over the water.
“Agh!” I jumped back, grabbing Emmy’s arm. “What the hell is that?”
“The barge,” Jerath answered for her, folding his arms and grinning at the thing as it approached us.
Many of the dwellers closest to it jumped back, scattering away from the edge. Someone pushed me, another landed an elbow in my gut. Everyone was now scrambling back, trying to get away from the barge. Jerath was striding forward, so Emmy grabbed my arm and started dragging me again. I could make out people on the barge, now. Two of them were manoeuvring something down, snapping it against the edge of solid ground, forming a bridge over the water, leading from us to them.
“Come on,” Jerath encouraged, moving toward the bridge. I could see many other dweller-guides doing the same thing, encouraging the rest of the gathered dwellers to cross onto the floating platform.
As soon as I stepped onto it, I let out a pitiful squeak. I could feel the water moving beneath, rocking me gently back and forth. It was terrifying … until I noticed Emmy laughing, and then I quickly convinced myself that it wasn’t scary at all, because I didn’t want to look like a wimp. We moved to the side, allowing the wimpy dwellers to push us closer and closer to the water in their bid to all stand in the centre of the barge. I sat down on the edge, Emmy beside me, Jerath standing behind us. Our bags were piled together with a bunch of other bags, and I kept an eye on them because I was not losing those pots. I didn’t care what Emmy said, they were important. Between watching my stuff, I studied the barge and everything else to do with this water marvel. The platform was too thick for our feet to touch the water, but I could feel the spray. It was cool and sharp, all at once.
We watched as the island drew near: displaying a patchwork array of water-front houses; along with giant, colourful stone buildings; and imposing skyreachers. A very strange kind of building sat in the centre of it all, making it the centre of the world itself. It was raised up, on a hill, with a giant stone wall creeping all around the valleys of the small mountain beneath, gradually enclosing the very tip, where the strange building sat.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing. I wasn’t asking Emmy or Jerath in particular, just whoever answered me first.
“Blesswood Academy.” Emmy was the one to answer, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. “It’s exactly how they described it.”
“The academy grounds contain more than just the academy itself,” Jerath added, watching the peak with us. “The Temple of the Creator is inside those walls, and the Sacred Sand arena.”
We stood as the barge slowed, I grabbed my bag before anyone else could think of touching it. The large water vessel eventually came to a standstill, and we moved with the rest of the dwellers hurrying to get their feet on solid ground again. They herded us toward a path carved into the side of the small mountain, and we climbed right to another set of gates. Two more sols stood guard, just as they had at the entrance to Blesswood. I looked up to the top of the wall and caught another sol face, briefly appearing over the edge.
“This everyone?” one of the guards grunted at Jerath.
We had managed to draw to the front of the long procession during our walk up, but it wasn’t because we were particularly braver or stronger or faster than the other dwellers. It was because Emmy was particularly braver, stronger, and faster than the other dwellers, and she had been dragging me again. She was standing there now, not a single wrinkle in her expression as she brushed her hair over her shoulder and stood straight for the inspection of the guard. I was wheezing, my hands on my knees. The guard also inspected me, a small, sardonic smile on his face, before running his eyes down to the end of our procession.
“Go on in,” he announced, jerking his head to the side and moving out of the way.
This was it. I was stepping into what would be Emmy’s home for the rest of her life, and what would be my home for probably about half a sun-cycle. Maybe even an entire sun-cycle. All I needed to do was stay away from fire, tar, sharp things, pointy things, serrated things, hot things, breathing things, living things, and sacred things.
I paused, my feet stalling, my eyes flying wide. We had stepped into a courtyard with multihued stones underfoot and a giant, ancient piere tree standing in the middle, breaking up the cobblestones with thick, papery-white, gnarled roots. It figured that it was twice the size of the ancient piere tree back home, and that there were several more that I could see, spread around the winding cobbled pathways leading between academy buildings. It wasn’t the tree that had surprised me, though. It was the guy tied to the tree, and the guy standing before him, holding up a crossbow. He was blindfolded, and the guy tied to the tree was laughing. They were clearly sols, because they were bigger than normal dweller men. Bigger, even, than what I would have expected of a sol. The one tied to the tree looked just a little older than me, his bright eyes sparkling with laughter. I wanted to draw closer, to see the colour of his eyes, or to confirm that his hair actually was the stunning meld of golden-black that it appeared to be from this distance. He glanced over as the dwellers behind us also came to a stop, and he started to laugh even harder.
“Turn!” he shouted.
The guy with the crossbow raised his arm, aiming the bolt directly at the other’s chest, before slowly turning.
Turning … to face us.
Jerath made a groaning sound, but nobody did anything to stop the crazy sol. He had the same golden tarnish to his hair as the one tied to the tree, though it was more golden-red, and his skin was a shade more tanned. He was also built like he tore up trees from the ground for a fun hobby. The blindfold over his eyes seemed to mask his face more than just his eyes, but I could still make out the infinitesimal smirk twisting his lips.
“Stop!” the one tied to the tree shouted.
The crossbow—and the guy holding it—paused. The bolt quivered … and everyone turned to stare at me, because it was now pointed directly at me.
“Don’t mind them,” Jerath consoled, taking a step back.
“Are you seriously saying that while you move away from me?” I hissed out quietly.
“Those are the Abcurse brothers—or two of them anyway. Coen has a gift for Pain, and Siret has a gift for Trickery.”
“The one that has a gift for pain … is he the one holding the crossbow by any chance?”
“Yeah …”
“Really?” I groaned, even though my heart was kicking up a riot inside my chest and my eyes were fixed to the annoyingly still crossbow bolt. “I didn’t even
last one step into Blesswood.”
As the words left my mouth, Emmy kicked out a leg, knocking me into the ground. I felt the air brush past my face, something tugging against my hair, and then I heard the telling thunk of a crossbow bolt embedding itself into the wooden gate behind us. A gate that had obviously been nudged shut at some point, to protect the dwellers congregating around the entrance. I stared at the bolt, my mouth dropping open, my brain short-circuiting, and then I looked back to Coen, who had ripped the blindfold off and strolled forward a few steps. He had bright green eyes, smoking to a dark colour around the edges of the pupils, and I now noticed that the colour of his hair actually bled a deep, burnt red, with only a few golden strands. He glanced down at me on the ground, frowned, and then wandered away, resting his crossbow over his shoulder.
Siret, who had been left at the tree, struggled out of his ropes, jumping over the base of the tree and sauntering over to us.
“Dear little dirt-dwellers!” he sang, raising his arms and grinning as the gate creaked open again. “Welcome to Blesswood, and to the beginning of the rest of your lives! Try not to get in the way when my brother decides he’s bored.”
“Or when you decide you’re bored,” Jerath muttered beneath his breath.
Siret walked the rest of the way over, holding his hand out to me. I didn’t want to take it. I really didn’t. Emmy cleared her throat, though, her eyes full of panic, and I quickly grabbed his hand. He hauled me to my feet with far more ease than was really necessary to display to everyone, and I accidently stomped on his foot. He didn’t seem to notice. He brushed off my shoulders as I tried not to get distracted by the green-gold tint of his eyes. They were lighter than his brother’s, but just as stunning. Did all sols have such stunning eyes?
He almost had you killed! Right. His eyes sucked. He had sucky eyes, and so did his brother.
“See you round, Rocks,” he said, sweeping his gaze over me before turning and jogging down the path his brother had taken.
“Rocks?” I managed, as the guides started ushering the other dwellers inside again.
Everyone was trying pretty hard to pretend that nothing had happened, but I could see the nervous expressions on their faces, and the sympathetic looks they shot my way. They were wasting their energy. Shit like this happened to me all the time. Maybe not on a sacred sol of Blesswood almost murdering me for no reason whatsoever scale, but close.
Emmy was chuckling beneath her breath, which meant that she had worked out my nickname.
“What?” I nudged her.
“You dropped like a bag of rocks.”
“It wasn’t that funny.” I scowled.
Three
It was a sombre, sweaty crowd that made its way the last few yards into the inner domain of Blesswood. Our first introduction to the gifted sols had been enough for all of us to realise that shit had just gotten real. Really real. Being a dweller in the village might be a lowly, unfortunate life, but we were all pretty equal there. Here, we would know every single sun-cycle that we were the dirt beneath the blessed feet of the blessed sols.
Dirt-dweller.
Punching a sol in the nose was probably frowned upon in Blesswood. I reminded myself to check the rule book on that one later, right after I learned how to punch. I should probably just stick with tripping and kneeing them in the groin, since it was one of my specialties. Maybe I could throw some tar on them. I was pretty sure that Siret and Coen wouldn’t be so confident if they had to shave off all their pretty hair.
“Follow me,” Jerath demanded, his voice loud enough to be heard over our panicked and rapid heartbeats. “There’s no time to settle in, you’ll find your bunk, dump your bags, and then get your assigned dorms, classes, and other duties. These were all decided long before you reached Blesswood, by the dweller-relations committee, so don’t bother arguing, you won’t get reassigned unless a sol requests it. No special circumstances.”
Well great. What were the odds I pulled washroom duties for the rest of my life? Maybe being sacrificed to the gods wasn’t the worst thing that could happen here. I focused on sucking up as much of the surrounding beauty as I could, before I was stuck cleaning urine-pots and bowing down to sols. The main room of this particular building was huge, with a dome-shaped ceiling. There were these scattered panes of glass, which allowed trickles of sunlight to wash down the marbled white walls and pillars. There didn’t seem to be much in the actual room, furniture-wise. It appeared to be a central point, leading to a bunch of other buildings.
Jerath, who had somehow slipped into leader mode—and was definitely letting the power go straight to his head—was waving everyone forward. “Hurry up, there’s no time for your slow, village backwardness right now.”
We were roughly ushered through a small, dark archway, which somehow ended up in the corner of the beautiful building, and then down some dark, wooden stairs. I could see the staircase also went up, but apparently, they wanted us as far from the gods as possible.
Jerath’s voice drifted back through the narrow stairs. “This is the dwellers’ stairway. You’ll use these back stairs to move around Blesswood as much as possible. The sols like their privacy; they want things done right, but without having to see or smell you.”
I decided that chatty leader-Jerath was my least favourite of all the Jeraths—he was so much more fun when he was silent and spraying sols with street water.
It was dark and kind of damp in this section. I preferred wide-open spaces, and less elbows in my ribs. Also, the sweaty nerves thing was really starting to become an olfactory problem. The sols should probably cross off the not smell us thing. That just wasn’t going to work. Finally, after climbing down four million and fifty stairs, we reached the dwellers’ section. There was no natural light in this part; we were clearly far, far underground.
“Did anyone tell them about things collapsing on me?” I whispered to Emmy. “Someone should have warned them.”
She shook her head, before her hand snaked around to cover my mouth. “We’re one floor down, Will, you’re going to be fine.”
One! Was she insane? Those stairs had been never-ending!
“Female dorms are to the left, males to the right.” Jerath was actually waving his hands now. Whatever chill he’d been channelling on the way here was long gone. “I’ll be waiting for you back in the main foyer. You have until the bells ring for next class.” He was gone then, back up the never-ending stairs.
Emmy was in the mood to get shit done. She had her arm around my entire middle this time, and was barrelling through all the poor dwellers who thought they were getting first pick of beds. From what I saw in our dash through, it looked like the dwellers’ underground bunker was a small, dull room. Rocks under our feet, and above our heads. Real homey feel to it, what with all the dust and the lack of natural light.
“Are all the dwellers here?” I asked, trying not to breathe in the second-hand air. There was nothing fresh down there, that was for sure.
“Nope, this is just for the newbies. Although there are always a lot of newbies. Sols aren’t very gentle with their play things.”
Emmy hadn’t answered that time. Someone else knew things too, which lowered my need to ever learn. I was good with that. I swivelled to see a petite girl with a huge mane of bushy, dirty-blonde curls. She was doing well to keep pace with my manic best friend. Her huge, azure eyes gave her face a cute-but-slightly-weird look. She seemed friendly enough though.
“So where do the dwellers who last longer than a life-cycle go?” I asked.
Emmy had told me on the way over that we would be considered ‘recruits’ for the first life-cycle, and that after that, we would become ‘resident’ dwellers. Creepy, I thought. Hi! I’m just the resident dweller. I’ll be waiting down here in the dungeon if you feel like some tea. Anyway, using that information, it made sense that we’d be stuck down here for that long.
“Another building,” the girl answered. “To the east of the academy estate. I heard t
hat it’s also underground, but slightly nicer. My cousin was here for many life-cycles; she now serves in Soldel.”
We were in the female wing now, and it was about the same level of awesome as the previous room, just add in twenty or so small boxes masquerading as bedrooms. Emmy was dragging me toward the boxed room closest to the door, when I dug my feet in and pointed toward the name tags on the small edges above the doorway. It said Janelle Brown and Samsa Neel.
“Think we have to find our names,” I said tentatively. I recognised her mood, so I was treading lightly.
She actually growled then, like a weird forest-cat growl. “We need to be near the entrance so that we don’t miss any calls.”
Right. That was my first thought also.
With a huff, I was dragged along each of the cordoned-off rooms, until finally Emmanuelle Knight came into sight. There was only one name above her door, which was odd. It looked like the two chosen from each of the villages were rooming together. Except for those who had a male and a female.
With a shrug, I followed her in, glad to see that there were two beds in the tiny box. “Guess they forgot about me. It happens.” This was the start; I could feel it. The start of Willa Knight ceasing to exist at all.
A metallic tinkling sound broke the silence around us. It was a dull noise, like it came from far away. Back up the million-or-so stairs, I was sure.
Emmy’s face went deathly white. She shot-putted her bag across the room, and I watched as it slammed against the wall before falling to the tiny bed on the left side.
“Was that really necess—”
She cut me off. “The bells. It’s the goddamn freaking bells.”
“I hate this place,” I groaned, as she pulled her leg out and used her foot to nudge me toward the door. “Seriously, Emmy, did you just kick me?”