Midnight's Song (4 page)

The hardest times were
still yet to come. My father sunk into a depression that
intoxicated him more than the most potent liquor. Papa soon
returned to the boats, and the small lifeline we had of food from
our neighbors stopped its flow. Food was scarce for everyone. Even
when they made a good catch, Papa wasn’t allowed to take home any
more than his ration. The ration was nearly as small as his wages –
hardly enough to feed one person, let alone two.

In a few weeks the cupboard was
completely bare.

That summer
contained the worst drought that our country had experienced in
years. The sandy beaches and cobblestone roads of the Katie Isles
became scorched and sizzling just as did every other part of the
country. In the South, the 8
^th
caste farmers couldn’t
produce their crops. In the North, the 5
^th
caste technicians worked
tirelessly to keep the dams from running dry.

Our fearless Magistrate
did nothing to help. It was only when June’s rays charred his
family’s prized orchards and shrivel his blood oranges that he even
acknowledged the crisis. When he did acknowledge it, the only
conclusion he could come up with for this tragedy was an offense
which I’d never seen or heard of in these parts:

Witchcraft.

The Magistrate insisted
that the people become more pious – implying that this drought must
have been a punishment for crimes against God. While the witch-hunt
began, my people starved. We struggled to make it through, with so
much strife that my mother seemed luckier dead than we were
alive.

Two months passed,
and I realized that with every day that went by was one day closer
to my 16
^th
birthday. Regardless of drought or sickness or death, I’d
still have to stand before a judge of the Imperial Court and make
my decision. I’d made up my mind to stay here long ago, yet now I
was unsure. The family I’d longed to stay with was gone now. Hunger
gnawed at my bones daily. The ocean wasn’t even a place where I
could seek refuge anymore! Guards constantly patrolled the
shoreline to ensure workers weren’t abandoning their posts to
escape the heat in the waves. Everything was falling
apart!

Even the glorious symbol of the lily
had withered.

The darkest day of the Hard Season was
mid-July. I woke up that day to find that Papa had wandered off and
forced myself to find the energy to stand. I hadn’t eaten a solid
meal in several days, and now the pain was agonizing. I made my way
to the sink and splashed my face with a handful of its dirty, warm
water. Although it wasn’t suitable for drinking – I did so anyway.
I held my breath and drank the water as if I’d been thirsty for
days, pretending that it wasn’t as putrid as it truly
was.

But I still didn’t eat.

The next thing I knew my
grip against the counter was loosening and the will of my muscles
disappearing as I slipped onto the ground. The world went black.
When it became light again, my mother’s midwife, Una was standing
over me. The nurse had come to check on me just minutes before and
found me lying there, prostrate on the floor and hardly conscious.
She immediately took me and cared for me, giving me an emergency
packet of gruel that she had been saving for the sickest of the
sick.

“Someone must do
something,” Una muttered over me that day. “Otherwise this child
will die.”

That night, my hollow
faced father came in through the screen door looking as ghastly as
death itself. I still don’t know where he could have been
beforehand. It seemed that his eyes were bloodshot and glazed,
drunken with grief if not with alcohol. The detached man walked
past the sight of his half-dead child and locked himself in his
room.

That day was the darkest
of them all. It was the day that I first realized I was fully
alone. I realized that even though my Papa still had breath in his
lungs, the man that I once knew was gone. Papa was dead to me now,
utterly dead. I was no better than an orphan.

There was nothing
left for me in these Isles anymore. It had all simply
withered.

Eventually the drought
eased. The months passed and the earth inevitably pulled away from
her sun. Cool winds doused the village as small blessings from the
Atlantic. Though, that still didn’t mean that it brought any
rain.

Una took care of me for
the remainder of that month and the next until I was well. I knew I
couldn’t stay with her forever. I still had to make my choice.
Currently, my mind was only on survival. I was alive, but my mind
was in a clouded jumble. The picture of reality I’d had was gone.
The reality of staying here was bleak, but so did the reality of
leaving.

August came and went. Papa
was beginning to disappear more frequently, sometimes for weeks on
end. Soon it was September. Then, October came. My choice was now
days away. I still couldn’t decide. I wouldn’t. Soon the same
harvest moon which I had been born under resurfaced in the night
sky. Tomorrow would be the day that I would have to make my
choice.

But I couldn’t.

I allowed that day to pass
even though I knew that the decision would still haunt me. When the
papers arrived for me in the mail with the time of my hearing, I
did nothing. I had pulled away just as my father had – completely
desensitized. I didn’t know very much, but I knew that I was not
going to be standing before the judge that day. Of course, my
actions wouldn’t go unpunished. The crime of rebellion had a hefty
price.

October the
12
^th
arrived. There was no food or festivities. I spent most of
that day in bed, locked alone in my room. The time for celebration
seemed to have long passed. My hearing was to be at 5:30 pm that
day. I did not attend. And just like that, October the
12
^th
came and went.

For two days, no one
bothered us. I put it from my mind, but it was a time bomb. After
the two days, it detonated. Papa came in through the door with a
look of despair that differed from the usual. In his hands he
carried an envelope that had been stamped with the court’s regional
seal. I took the envelope and tore it open.

“
Elissa McClellan
,”
it greeted, my name printed in a differing ink on
the obviously premade notice. “
You have
failed to appear at your designation hearing. These hearings are
not optional. They are mandatory for your immediate placement into
a proper caste. A missed designation hearing requires a fine of 200
quint. You will be given 3 days grace for your rescheduling. Your
rescheduled hearing will be on
October the
17
^th
at
12:00 pm
. If you do not appear with the money at this time, you will
be forced to participate either electively or
otherwise”

The judge signed his
name at the bottom in an angry, burning orange.
I took the letter and crumpled it up in both anger and
horror. How could they expect that we – an impoverished widower and
his deficient daughter – have
200
quint
readily available in three days?
Two-hundred quint was more than any 10
^th
caste family made in an
entire
year
!
There was no possible way I could do this. And there was no one
that could decide for me. As regimental as this world was, the
court still could not decide my caste.
I
did.

Even though it was
impossible for me to decide, I still couldn’t put it from my mind.
It felt that there was no way out. No way except for death, and I
wasn’t going to put my father through another tragedy of that sort.
I loved him far too much to do that. The grace passed right over my
head. The day after that was the day of wrath.

I woke up to find my
father pacing. For the first time in many weeks I saw genuine
concern in him. He looked me in the eyes and spoke for the first
time in a month. He was himself again; but a weary, burdened self.
Perhaps he was not so dead to me after all.

“You’ve done a very
foolish thing, Lissie.” The words were harsh. They came out plainer
than I’d ever heard. I could tell that they were coming from his
right-mind. “But I’m as much to blame now. You have to go to the
judge and tell him that you’ve made your choice!”

I looked to him reluctantly,
attempting to deter the conversation from the true nature of our
situation. “Our family doesn’t have 200 quint. We don’t even have
enough to feed ourselves.”

He looked to me gravely, but then
stopped. His expression softened and he put a warm hand on my
shoulder. Tears began to fall from my eyes as I saw my old father
come back in full.

“Lissie, money ain’t the
matter here. You needn’t worry ‘bout how it’d be paid. Money’s
somethin’ that can be made. It can be borrowed an’ replaced just
like a pair of shoes or an old coat. Those are things of easy
replacin’.” There were now tears in his eyes. “A daughter can’t
be.”

The feeling of my salty tears
completely engulfed me as I fell onto my father’s shoulder, wildly
sobbing. I had to go and do this. I had been such a
coward.

“Oh Elissa…” my Papa
softly whispered as I sobbed. “I’m so sorry for what I’ve become.
Please, just go before the judge. Just tell em’ you want to
leave!”

“I can’t leave you,” I shuddered,
quickly retracting at his words. “If I do I know you’ll die! You
can tell me that you won’t, but I know you will.”

“No, Elissa. Ya must!” He
pleaded, “Please, don’t become chained to this place because I am.
Don’t stay. You’ll surely starve!”

“
I can’t,” I choked. “They
gave me three days grace. Today is the fourth day.”

There was a knock on the
door. It was truly my greatest fears realized. Two officers waited
there, a rare motorcar parked in the lane. Papa and I fell deathly
silent, attempting to fall to the ground and play dead so that they
might decide no one was home. It was already too late. They’d
already clearly seen me looking at them through the window. Both
kicked in the door – coming in and taking me ferociously by the
arms before I was handcuffed and dragged to the back of their
motorcar. Papa fell to his knees, watching this helplessly occur
from the inside of the house.

This was it. There
was no other way. If I couldn’t decide, I would be without a caste.
People without a caste were not people. They were not safe and were
not fit to be part of any functioning society. Casteless people
were just as inhuman as those folkloric beings in the legends of
old –
monsters
disguised in human skin! Unless I could will myself to sign
my name on a paper or even open my mouth to make an audible plea, I
would formally cease to exist.

The more I thought about this, the
more the anger began to boil over.

They took me to the
courthouse and paraded me around the building in humiliation. The
officers then haphazardly pushed me down a dreadful, grey
passageway and shoved me into a holding cell in the basement. It
was a terribly small thing with rusty bars and an unbearably low
ceiling. Even I
had to crouch beneath it!
The ground wasn’t much better. It was mucky and wet, a small mound
of hay as the only kind of bed one could use as
protection.

“You’re such a stupid
little girl!” A jailer mocked me, watching for a reaction. “What
you’ve been given is a gift, McClellan. The only reason you’re here
is because you’re too dim-witted to use it.” The man then turned
and venomously spat at the ground beside me. “Your hearing is at
3:30. Hope that you’re not too unintelligent to read the
papers!”

“Oh, believe me,” I spat
back at him in retaliation. The powerful wad of spit landed right
on the tip of his shoe. “This is an unfair decision, one that I
won’t be making either way! You can take me up there all you want,
but you won’t hear a single word. You can give me a hundred papers,
but I won’t make a single stroke!”

The man then began laughing, half out
of cruelty and half because he was simply amused at my fatal
stubbornness.

“Well then, you’ll find
yourself locked in here every day until you do.”

They pulled me into the
courtroom that day, throwing me into a small wooden seat in front
of a towering podium. The judge sat before me, robed in white and
sashed with the magisterial crest. He was a stubby old man with
poor eyesight, constantly squinting from behind a pair of bifocals.
I could never tell if he was straining to see me or simply
glaring.

“Elissa Celeste McClellan,” he
struggled to read my name off of the paper. Thank goodness the
print was large enough! “You have failed to appear before the court
on your designated date. Do you have an adequate reason for
this?”

I kept my lips firmly pressed
shut.

“Well?” He asked again,
that same perpetual squint between the eyes.