Welcome Home Again Discarded Faith [Rum Tum / Nekane]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Rum Tum Tugger

'Oh la la, scully, scully, scully!' Fenrir growled out his call through the trees, little head bobbing and weaving between the sumac. He skittered out along the edge of the gulch before he whipped around, both fingers pointed out to the base of a decaying log, his first guess at my hiding place. He snarled to bare his teeth and let out a cackle to echo out along the stone face of the embankment surrounding us.

Scully was the call to start our hide and seek. A game we used to pass the time on stretches of days where we stopped to let the world reveal itself. He’d scully out for a few minutes to the edge of a clearing, and let me do my best to hide. Part play, part training for both of us to keep fresh from the sort of folk that would be wandering out between districts. He’d have to learn how to find the breach between an oak tree, and how to cover his face with dirt so well that I couldn’t spot him all squished against the hollow of bark. He’d gotten pretty good at finding places to wedge his little body into, though his favorite new trick was climbing up so high that I couldn’t spot him.

He’d once gotten the drop on me literally from about twenty feet up. It was a good thing he didn’t weigh sixty or so pounds, or that he’d screamed the whole way down, jumping from a branch and swinging his arms and legs on the fall. Impact was me and him cracking a bush in half. He walked away just fine, while I got the most of it with my pride, and then a couple of bruised ribs as a parting gift.

Fenrir’s first liberation trip had been last year, but Freya had come along with both of us. Not that she didn’t trust we could take care of ourselves. I liked to think that part of it was that she wanted to see Fenrir come to understand why this was so important; that our choice of freedom wasn’t about finding the way to live within a system they’d created. No, we were the clouds rolling overhead, untethered by the will of those below. We were the waves that crashed across the beaches outside of four, or tall swaths of grass at the edge of the north so thick you had to push your way through.

We lived by few rules. Leave the world better than you found it. Let others exist as they wished to be. Cultivate an unselfish heart. Love the world and forgive the flesh. Above all, preserve freedom.

Easy stuff for a nine-year-old to understand, if you could believe it.

Fenrir discovered me along the space where the river met the mud of the bank, covered in desiccated brown leaves and tangled up in old ivy.

'I caught you!' Fenrir hunched over me, his hands on his hips and his big head inching closer to mine. 'You got to do a better job papa, this is getting too easy!'

“Too easy! Why I oughta…” I jumped up from my spot and sent the leaves flying. Fenrir screeched and giggled as I wrapped both arms around my pride and joy. He and I tumbled back down to the ground, me growling like a monster of the deep as he tried to wrestle free.

We spent another hour tossing rocks on the river's surface. I showed him how to flick his wrist and get five whole hops out across the water. He did it once, though the rest of the time worked himself into a fit, never matching that toss.

When we packed up the rest of camp and he threw his leather knapsack across his back, he launched into the usual flurry of questions. Where are we going? How long until we get there? Have you been here before?

The call and response had its answers. Back to an old place I’d been away from for twenty years. A few hours. Yes – when I was a younger man.

We made camp that night outside the walls of district eleven without starting a fire. We snacked on hardtack and jerky. The humid summer heat allowed us to sleep out under the stars, hand sewn sleeping bags pressed side by side. We’d made up names for the collection of stars overhead, and take turns naming them. He did this until his yawns got too big and his eyelids too heavy. He fell into a steady slumber and left me with my eyes on the stars.

Time should’ve made it easier to be back here, but if it’d been time to heal me, I’d have been returned a long time ago.

A few hours before dawn and I shook him awake. We edged along some of the sewer drains, up along the buzzing fence with concrete and rebar. He knew well enough not to talk now that we were so close to the district, but now and again, I’d catch him staring up at the height of the wall, and the way the barbed wire coiled across the parapets.

We wandered back and forth for a while trying to dust off the cobwebs floating through my head. I’d gotten into eleven more than once, and I could have sworn that there was a little chute, whether for rainwater or irrigation that popped up right outside the wall. Had enough time passed that someone had finally figured out this thing still existed?

Fenrir tugged at my jacket and I’d moved to grab back at his hand when he pointed down at the manhole covering sticking out of the dirt. It took a good heave from me and him to twist the thing open.

Staring down at the black of the abyss was about the only time I wondered if this was crazy. But then we’d done this so many times in other districts, what made eleven any different?

(only a history of things going wrong).

When we came out the other side, it was still an indigo sky overhead. Morning would come soon, and with it, folks heading to work. I pressed along through the fields, in between stalks of wheat and out along the edges of a set of familiar hills. I crouched with Fenrir at the site of an older man out on his porch. Lonely looking, head heavy while he stared off into the distance. I swear he might’ve seen us, but after a while found his way back into his house.

The day broke across the clouds and shifted the sky from orange to a peaceful blue.

I pointed to my nose and signaled Fenrir to stay put. He met this with an eye roll, and flopped down on his butt with his arms crossed.

Out at the edges of the plants was a woman tending garden. So focused on the plants I wondered if I could stroll right past her and head toward the district. Standing at the edge of the field, I watched her then. She seemed too familiar – one of them – but not one I could remember. It'd been twenty long years since I set foot here, and I wondered if I looked anything like the fresh faced boy I'd been. Probably made me stand a little taller, thinking about how I could have been anyone to a woman like her, just a man wandering.

Freya would've pointed out that most women were not fans of men "just wandering" up to them.

That couldn't dissuade me from taking the chance to figure out just how close we were to where I wanted to be. Besides, it wasn't like we couldn't run off screaming if things went too awry.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” I edge out through the dirt in my boots and came to a halt over her. My shadow cast long over her little garden. “Do you think you could tell me who’s farm this is? I’m looking for someone, but I think I might have gotten a bit turned around.”

[Cait]

Cyro Krane is a dead man.

I’ll kill him, I swear it, ‘cause we were free, for one year. One year to forget the name Izar was all we needed. We’d be the best little workers we could be if it meant no more names pulled out of the Reaping bowl. A pipe dream, maybe, but we can dream and hope and pray.

I held my breath as they pulled two unfamiliar names from that dreaded glass bowl; I wish I was good enough of a person to say I didn’t feel relieved.

“Safe,” I whispered, but I spoke too soon.

Cyro Krane is not an Izar, but he may as well be.

“I volunteer.”

“Daddy! Daddy!”

I wish I was deaf, or blind, or both. I just want to forget it all, but when I close my eyes I see ghosts across a screen of black. I don’t want to live with the weight of broken families anymore.

I don’t want to keep losing, but it’s too late to turn back now.

At the worst of times, we don’t get a choice in our fate. So we look forward to the best of times, so hard to come by.

Today was meant to be one of those days, and Cyro Krane went and ruined it all.

Cyro Krane is not an Izar, sure – and after today, he could never hope to stake that claim. No Izar would leave their family behind if they could do anything to help it.

He’s made his grave now.

And if he comes back alive, I’ll kill him myself.

❖

It had taken a full day to calm myself down enough to trudge over to Marisol’s. I’d offered to help with any cleaning and odd jobs I could find despite her insistence against it. I’d have listened and scurried back to my own hut for fear of being a nuisance if I wasn’t so selfish. I could never tell her it’s for my own sake more than hers. The days feel so lonely, and it’s a peculiar feeling to long for company when you’ve lived your entire life a lone wolf. The monthly visits turned to fortnightly turned to weekly, but I can’t recall how that happened. All I know is the gratefulness in my heart when she welcomed me with open arms each time I came knocking.

There’s something about a familiar face that’s stood the test of time that soothes my nerves. There’s a red flashing number at the foreground of my brain – 35 – that won’t leave me alone. Thirty-five years old, and still alive, but at what cost?

I don’t think this is living, thoughts to ponder as I sit at the small table in the corner of the kitchen, hands clasped around a steaming mug. I’m not a kid anymore, and there must be more to all of this than the same old routine.

But staring into the depths of a cup of black tea won’t change the world.

I feel Marisol’s eyes rake across my face, knowing fully well she can read my mind like an open book. My simmering anger fills the room, a thin layer of smog to block the new rays of a rising sun through the window. Sadness takes its place in the passenger seat, steering me further and further down a path I can’t turn back from.

I look up at Marisol apologetically, I’m sorry for the way I am, but she’s never been one to judge. She leaves me to my cloudy thoughts with a wistful smile and a gentle hand on my shoulder, one, two, pats against my shirt.

My heart burns. I’ll miss her soft hands and her kind eyes that house ten lifetimes of wisdom.

By the time I finally manage to swallow two mouthfuls of my now-cold tea, the sun is high in the sky and calling. I hurry outside onto yet another day that’s begun without me.

The familiarity of Vasco’s terrace calms my racing mind as I knew it would as I fall into an easy rhythm of gardening. I pluck a delicate daisy from the soil and turn it over in my hands. I remind myself to ask Vasco to take a handful of them home to sit in a jar on my dresser. It’s the little things.

“Excuse me, ma’am?”

It’s a voice of shards of glass – hoarse, razor sharp and slicing the petals right off my flower, but it’s not unkind. I don’t know why I was expecting cruelty from the stranger in Vasco’s garden of warmth, but I’m aware of the new-found tension in my jaw nonetheless. Maybe it’s the thundercloud over my head reminding me that we’re only two short weeks away from another fucking funeral.

Maybe it’s the fact he’s just that – a stranger.

Although.

There’s something in his eyes that sends me back home to scouring through photographs, searching for a familiar face. His unkempt beard and unwashed face don’t make the task any easier, and I’m aware I’ve spent thirty seconds too long staring at him, trying to decipher the puzzle in front of me, before I have the sense to look away. But I almost don’t want to.

There’s something within him, just below the surface of dusty skin. Something like home.

But then he speaks, again, with a faraway accent, and he’s a stranger once more.

“Do you think you could tell me who’s farm this is? I’m looking for someone, but I think I might have gotten a bit turned around.”

No.

Something’s wrong.

Last I checked, not knowing that you’re standing in the garden of the District Mayor is a pretty big giveaway that you’re not in the right place. That you’re a bit too far from home.

I’m acutely aware of the knife tucked neatly into my sock – too blunt to maim a man, but enough of a weapon to give me a running start on him. I’ve never had to use it – would never have even considered having one close, but the riots of recent have set me on edge. It’s easier not to trust anyone. Almost definitely safer.

I’m a stupid girl, but I’ll stand my ground and protect Vasco’s flowers and what they mean to me.

“If you don’t know where you are, then you’re not a friend, and you should probably leave.”

A blade screams at my side in time with the twitch of a trigger-happy hand.

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

R u m  T u m  T u g g e r

Would you like to

make a run for it

Would you like

to take my hand?

The last time I’d come stomping over the fields and run roughshod into the crowd of Izars, they’d taken one good look at me and run screaming that I was my brother’s ghost come to haunt them.

As Deval explained, part of it had been magical thinking that his spirit hadn’t left them after all, and another that they deserved to be punished for his death. That was a symptom of living stuck between the walls here, that even if they got a second chance with Benat, he wasn’t sent home for forgiveness, but a reckoning.

Imagine that even with all the love they could’ve mustered for one another, to see someone back from the dead, you had to assume he was there to cause them misery? For half a second, my own half-brother had threatened to kill me for showing my face, as though I was some sort of creation sent to taunt them while they grieved.

When Sampson had run away, he’d told me about how lonely he’d been, even as big as his family was. They’d spent years tilling the same fields at the edge of the district clinging to their history, half out of stubborn pride, and half out of devotion to the fact that they’d had something special none of them wanted to lose.

He told me about nights around the long wooden table in his uncle’s backyard, little children chasing one another, adults sipping their drinks and laughing. They were happy enough with the little they'd had, he said, Even if it’d never been perfect.

Nothing gold can stay; Freya had said hearing his story.

Neither of us knew what it was like to grow up in a place where a single person wanted what was best for us; we’d learned to survive through force of will, or until someone else came along to show us we didn’t have to go it alone.

I was luckier, wandering through rivers and streams, across rolling hills and not once thinking about how awful the world was. Yeah, growing up, my mother and I had to be careful of the kind of folk that might be wandering the woods, or about getting too close to one of the districts. But the idea of some place that would chain us down and keep us locked in was as distant as the other side of the mountain. It’d always be there; we got to choose whether or not we faced it.

I’d made the choice there were better men than me to fight what the world had become. Freya rescued me close on twenty years now, and we’d found a better life outside of all of this; a place where no matter how wonderful anything could seem, you couldn’t escape how stagnant all of it was. Sampson had tried to run from it twenty-years ago, and I think that’s what it was all about. Not that he hated any of them, but he knew he couldn’t last between these walls like a caged animal. Too much self-awareness for his own good.

Fenrir pressed down to the ground, but I could see the curly mop of black hair even through the stalks of corn out of the corner of my eye.

Why’d I come back then?

‘If you don’t know where you are, then you’re not a friend, and you should probably leave.’

She was a cat about to pounce. She was all angles, under a hot sun looking tensed like a trip wire. I couldn’t get past the, you’re not a friend. Felt as though she’d slammed the door already, not wanting to hear whatever I had to say.

Something must’ve left her bruised, enough that she didn’t think anyone coming through the garden had any good news.

“I might be mistaken,” I started, hands behind my back, “But this should be the Izar place. Some of these farms, anyway.” It felt odd saying the name, like a memory I’d shaken dust from, now right in front of me. A piece of history I hadn’t yet let go of.

“I’m related to, well, a bunch of them,” I put a hand behind my head and gave a smile. “If Sampson’s around, he might help explain it.”

Sweat trickles underneath my arms and not just from the hot sun overhead. There was a fifty-fifty chance he’d take a swing at me, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

Liberation took a lot of forms, and his was past due. Hopefully I’d be able to free him from these walls, and he could live as he'd been meant to.

elegant