The Fall

Luck. Only a little and we might survive the season.

Out of breath, I close the door behind me. Slivers of dying sunlight leak through cracks in the cavern door, barely enough to light my hiding place under the stone floor where I wedge a sack of wheat before the red horizon swallows her sun. Nothing like the sunsets on Earth, so I've heard. They say her sky was pale blue and watered the fields with mist whenever they grew thirsty.

Crop lamps buzz to life and the harvest drum rumbles in the distance, its demand reverberates off the dome and sweeps cold dread through my bones. I slink back to the field before anyone misses me. Silhouettes of my mother and sister are hazy through red, sand-stained wind as they gather the remnants of the autumn harvest.

Ten more years and I’ll look like her, leather-skinned, with eyes in a permanent squint, body hunched from a lifetime of stooping, forced into marriage like all the women condemned to life under this massive dome. All to feed strangers in a place where they don't starve to death while surrounded by food. Not exactly what our ancestors had in mind when they travelled here all those years ago in search of a better world. Mom has my gangly-limbed little brother strapped to her back. “Let me take him.” I reach out and she flinches, but I can’t blame her.

I was already thirteen when Maike was born. Mom had been pregnant for years, it seemed. After she whispered pretty sentiments of love to her long-awaited son, I said love wouldn’t feed him and what he needed was mercy. All forms of contraception are forbidden, but even the Sayers can’t prove a baby wasn’t stillborn. Kind of a twisted loophole, one that I exploited.

I didn’t want to do it; I had to. Before I even knew what was happening, my fists were balled around the edges of the pillow, and I was pressing it down. Mom's feet landed dead center of my gut, knocking the wind from me and sealing Dad’s fate. She stood by while they carted him away three weeks after Maike's birth.

“He’ll be back,” Mom soothed my sister with lies when she whimpered for her papa.

After fathering a third child, men get the privilege of terra-forming the borderlands. Wives are placated with extra rations, as long as their husbands survive. After three months, Dad's rations stopped.

“See to the girls. Your Aunt and I have enough to do.” Mom straightens her scarf to shield Maike, dust blowing unnoticed against her weathered face. Decorating her throat rests a meaningless heart-shaped locket that I hate her for wearing. She traded the man who gave it to her for three sacks of grain and a baby destined to starve. I shrug away her rejection and search for my sister.

“Arie!” Emmie peeps up at me with blue-green eyes bursting with hope. Even in the gloom, she’s drenched in sunshine. “Where'd you go?”

“Sharpened my blade.” I crouch and grip a handful of wheat, slice through it's thick stalks, and pass Emmie the bundle. I pinch the point of her tiny nose and tug on her straw-thin braids. “You can tie sheafs. Get your cousins, we’ll be done before you know.”

“Lu, Charei, get over here.” She stomps her foot soundlessly and flashes her toothless grin. Our two little cousins toddle over, blissful in their ignorance as my aunt’s growing belly counts down their father’s days like the bottom of an hourglass.

“Keep your scarf tightened, squirt.” I crouch and retie it just as someone tugs mine loose. I grab it before it blows away, then stand and stretch, my back sore from hunching all day.

“Need a hand?” Kai smirks and wags his eyebrows.

“At least one more.” I pass him my sickle and point to the girls, who’ve abandoned sheafing for a game of dirt hopscotch.

"Stuck some under that broken irrigation pump," Kai whispers, smirking.

“That’s too much, they'll notice,” I say, but it’s too late. A wedge of light cuts through the night from an approaching glider.

“Scarfe,” growls Kai, his grin disintegrates to a scowl.

“What's he want now?”

“Don’t know.” Kai stuffs the sickle into his belt and knits his brows to a crooked crease as the glider stops at our granary.

“What does he want?” I ask and immediately regret it.

“How 'bout I go ask.”

“Kai, stop.” He doesn’t, so I hurry to catch up, nearly tripping on my own feet.

“Your tariff looks light,” says Scarfe.

“Because the soil’s dead like your shit seeds, Scarfe.” Kai spits the commander’s name like toxin and wraps his fist around the sickle as wind whips Scarfe in the face.

“Watch it, Orphan,” Scarfe sputters and wipes the sand away with a sleeve, his other hand glued to his laser.

I’ve only seen a laser used once, which was enough. Our neighbour’s boy Opie was barely ten and had something wrong with his mind, but he was harmless and kinda sweet. Opie was playing soldiers and ran too fast at a guard during harvest, so he sliced him in half. They played it over and over again on the dome, sound and everything. I guess it was a warning but I think it pissed a lot of people off. Not enough though.

“Wind broke the stalks.” I step between them, my hand pressed against Kai’s pounding chest. “Some blew away.”

“Uh-huh,” says Scarfe, crossing his arms as mom approaches.

“After tomorrow,” Kai says later, “your full belly will thank me.”

We all long for the day the hunger will end, but Kai's got a death wish. After his family died, he stayed with us. Dad made sure he got his full ration despite mom’s protests. Orphans always get adopted, but they rarely get fed.

When rations tightened, we needed a plan. “Die if we do. Die if we don’t,” Kai had said. First harvest we only took a little. This time we’ve hidden enough to get us all through the cold months.

“We ought to slit their fat fucking necks and take it all back. Or better yet, let them suck poison outside the dome.” Rage boils Kai’s voice as he spits treason.

Maybe he's right. Maybe we should fight, but that could get us all banished. “I have Emmie and Maike to think of.”

“Don’t you get it, Arie? That’s how they want us to think,” Kai says dryly. “Besides, we all gotta die someday.”

“Attention, Citizens of the New Republic,” a voice booms, vibrating the dome as it lights with images of four Westie kids strapped to boards. One of the girls looks around fifteen, my age. “As penalty for conspiracy to commit theft, ten lashes and six months labor in the borderlands.” We all gotta die someday. Screams from their mothers nearly drown out the cracks as the show fades to night.

Harsh. Conspiring to steal usually gets you lashes, not a one-way trip to the borderlands. For outright stealing, like what Kai and I are doing, you get ejected from the dome. At least it'd probably be quick. I'm sure they'll show us a fun movie about it one of these days. Hopefully not starring me and Kai.

“It’s too risky,” I say for the thousandth time, wishing I could stop whining and leave it alone. Unhooking the sturdy lock, I climb the ladder to my loft, where I moved after Maike's birth. "We could survive on less.”

“I wanna do more than survive.” Kai pokes his head through the steel hatch.

“Where did you come from?” I say as a spotted red bug crawls across my blanket.

“Probably some new experiment the Sayer's are running.” Kai lets the bug crawl into his palm, raises it to eye level, and examines it carefully. “They must be getting bored with us.”

“We could try planting seeds again,” I bite my chapped lips. “Maybe they’re-”

“What, suddenly fertile? Likely as an orphan like me living past eighteen.” Kai squishes next to me, bug forgotten. Sometimes he sleeps up here. It's dark and sealed tight from the weather. It's the one place that feels almost safe.

“We need a plan,” I say, searching my covers for hidden bugs.

“We get caught, I’ll say it was me. The only thing the Sayers enjoy more than messing with our weather is killing orphans; it alleviates their boredom.”

We fight about who should take the fall until we stop making sense and our voices turn crackly. Delirious, we finally agree to a plan and fall asleep, wound in each other’s covers.

Late the next morning, Emmie points out mom’s window. A Sayer fleet glides along the tracks like a silver snake. My knuckles turn white as their funnels drain the granary. “Want my blood too,” I mutter bitterly and expose my veins. Black-masked soldiers armed with lasers stand guard. It's not like we’re a threat, conformity being our default state.

Two high-ranking officials wearing gold-trimmed red cloaks emerge from the first glider. Floating behind them, a black orb records everything like a giant eyeball.

“Where's Kai?” asks mom, wringing her hands.

"Dunno," I shrug.

Pressing my lips against Emmie’s forehead, I breathe in her salty sweetness, her cheeks warm against my palms. I stroke Maike's hair and kiss his sweaty face. “Remember your promise,” I remind Emmie.

After stepping over the threshold, mom turns and curls her finger. "Arie, time to go." Standing next to her, I notice how much taller I am now and wonder when that happened. She straightens my scarf as though it's a noose. I flinch.

A round-faced woman with long silver hair, slick to her waist strides toward us. “Name?”

“Emanie,” mom answers the woman politely, her eyes downcast, hands shaking.

“Did you think we wouldn't notice, Emanie?” The woman's high-pitched voice sounds more bird than human. The orb hums behind her, watching.

“Where’s the boy?” asks Scarfe, quietly.

I set my jaw and reach for the sickle I’m no longer carrying. “Surveying,” I lie.

Scarfe raises an eyebrow toward my mother, they exchange a look, and she nods, almost imperceptibly. My hair stands up.

“This one looks well fed,” says Scarfe.

“Yes, she does.” The second official tilts his head and stifles a yawn, apparently bored by his week of murdering. “Why are you so chubby?” He pinches my side, then chuckles, jowls waggling. “Did you eat your orphan?”

I imagine my sickle slicing his fat throat.

“Where's the grain?” screeches the silver-haired woman.

“Check the pump,” says mom. Then, ignoring my glare, she points.

“Mom?”

“Go.” The second official waggles a stubby finger at the irrigation pump, his face twists to a wicked sneer as an armed guard finds the large sac of grain Kai hid there only yesterday.

“Freeze her,” hisses the woman.

I bolt. Pain stabs from my back up through my head. My body arches forward and I flap around like a fish. My ears ring so loud, my teeth vibrate. The orb buzzes so close, I can feel it vibrating.

“We're late as it is,” Scarfe's voice is muffled, as though coming through a tunnel. My mind spins as I try to grasp the edges of what's happening. “Toss her in with the baggage for now.”

“Just don’t forget where you put her,” chuckles the jowly official. “Now that’d be interesting.”

Guards drag me past mom's worn boots and throw me in the back of a glider where I land with a thunk I don't feel. Mom doesn't scream like the other mothers, but then why would she? She'll still get my rations since she cooperated.

Sensation returns as blood tingles through my body, followed by stabbing pain, and I find my voice. My fists ball so tight, I strain to unfurl them. I retch but nothing comes. I force myself up and yank on a steel door handle, but it doesn’t budge so I press my face against the cool metal and slide my fingers through a narrow vent.

“I won’t let you,” Kai had said.

“It's the best plan,” I argued.

I didn’t want to do it; I had to. And Emmie will let him out, she promised. They’ll be okay, they will.

And it'll be fast.

***

Thirst drags me from a restless sleep sending my hand to my throat, where I discover mom’s locket clipped to my scarf. I pull myself up the cool wall, my body stiff as I squint out at a pale blue sky.