Page 2 of The Bones of the Cursed
After watering the flowers in the windowsills, I sit on the porch swing for a while, basking in the now late afternoon sun. The wind whisks away the sweat accumulating at my hairline.
Elion joins me when he’s finished in the field, his face full of worry. “What happened?”
He knows me better than anyone. He also knows I am a target at school for the bullies. Especially now that he graduated and isn’t there to protect me. I can feel the tears building, but I don’t want to cry. Luckily my mother calls us to dinner, putting this conversation on hold.
For now.
The smell of chicken wafts out of the kitchen and my stomachgrumbles. The table is set with our mismatched plates, some a cream color and others a light blue, some cracked and glued back together. The daisy’s I picked earlier in the week sit in the center, looking a tad withered.
Dinner is a quiet affair, my brother and father exhausted from working in the cornfield all day and my mother refusing to even look at me, let alone talk to me. It’s an awful feeling knowing your mother hates you, but not knowing why.
“Make sure you have your emergency satchels packed,” my father says. “Your uncle sent a letter saying the uprisings are growing worse. We may be evacuating sooner rather than later. He sent me the location of the closest rebel group. They move around a lot, but at least we have a general location to start if it were to happen.”
My stomach turns at the thought of leaving home. The realm on the brink of an internal war. I push my food around with my fork, but don’t attempt to eat anymore. No one speaks the rest of dinner, everyone lost in their own thoughts and worries.
After dinner, when I should be getting ready for bed, I instead creep down the stairs for a snack, pausing at the bottom when I hear my parents talking while my mother washes the dishes and my father dries them.
“Tiernan, this is serious,” my mother hisses. “She can’t be here any longer.”
My father grunts. “She is our daughter, Matilda. We can’t just abandon her.”
My mother’s harsh laugh makes my heart seize inside my chest. “Her teacher sent a note. You heard what happened. The rumors. If the government gets even ahintof this, we will all be dead.”
Tears line my eyes and I run from the house, my feet carrying me through the cornfield. Once I’m deep within the stalks, I collapse to my knees. I listen to the sound of crickets chirping,my fingers running over the dirt beneath me. This is the place I go to disappear. The corn hides me from sight, giving me a sense of freedom I long for. It’s hours later when my tears have ceased that I brush the dirt from my legs and start walking back home, to the place I am not wanted.
Off in the distance a horse whinnies. I turn towards the noise, noticing a group of sentries heading this way. Their silver armor glinting in the fading evening sun, the helmets they wear only offering a small glimpse of their eyes.
What I have feared for months is finally happening. The rumors and whispers have found their way to the government soldiers and now they’re coming for me. For my family. My heartbeat skyrockets as I race up the stairs, flying through the front door and right into my brother.
“What the hell, Lani?” He is annoyed but quickly changes as he takes in the stark fear on my face.
“They’re coming for me,” I spit out right as my mother and father step into the hallway. My mother’s eyes shutter, but my father doesn’t hesitate. He tears open the hall closet for our emergency bags, giving one each to us, and ushers us out the back door. I don’t dare turn back, too scared to see if the sentries have caught up. After a few hours my muscles finally relax, the cool night air kissing my sweaty skin. Elion holds my hand tightly, never letting go, like we’re children running through cornfields again. My father checks on me every now and then. But my mother won’t even acknowledge me.
We spend weeks walking and camping at random spots before we finally find the group of rebels my uncle told Father about. The rebels are fighting the government for its betrayal. Those in power have begun attacking the citizens when they don’t fall in line with their beliefs and rules. The head of this rebel group informed us that they even started bombing food sources, and soon they fear they will turn to outright killing massnumbers of people until all that remains are those who do as they are told.
At first Elion and I believed they were being overly paranoid, but now months and multiple campsites later, we see the truth. The government threw our entire world into a famine, plagued by disease and distrust.
We slowly settle into the new normal. Elion and my father constantly leave on scouting missions. My mother and I help with healing the injured, and she only speaks to me when absolutely necessary. I know she blames me for what has happened, though she won’t say it. Sometimes when Elion is home, we search for food and water in the surrounding woods near our camp. Resources are a scarcity with the government wiping out farms and forests.
A few injured rebels lay on cots in enormous white healing tents, my mother scurrying about. I thought the impending doom of the world would warm her to me, make her see how important family is. But if anything, she has only grown colder. I guess I can’t blame her. It’s because of me we were forced from our home.
“Alanis, tend to bed five. Make yourself useful for once,” she berates me.
Setting the last folded bandage into a box, I walk to the soldier whose abdomen is gaping open, pain etched across every line of his face. His lips are pale, breaths shallow. I’ve seen wounds like this since joining this rebel group, not many make it through.
Just another casualty of war.
Sadness pours through me, knowing that I don’t have the medical skills to fix this and our only real doctor is busy with another wounded rebel. There are too many to keep up with, beds filling as quickly as they empty.
The blood seeps between my fingers as I press my hands tohis wound and try to think of a plan. If only I could find a way to stop the bleeding, I could buy him more time until the doctor is available. Each passing second the man slowly slips away. I can sense death looming around us, everywhere you look.
A woman bursts through the tent carrying a newborn and her cries rip me to shreds. “Oh my Gods. Lenny!”
She’s screaming a name, tears coursing down her face as she races towards me. I pray to any Gods who are listening that this man whose stomach I’m holding together isn’t the man she cries for. That the man dying in front of me is not her husband, the father of her infant child.
Unfortunately, the Gods never seem to listen. The woman falls to her knees, grasping the man’s hand. “Please, you have to save him!”
She’s crying and screaming. I watch the man gingerly cup her face, then his son’s, love shining in his gaze.
