The Scent of Lilac: An Arrow's Flight Novella (10 page)

           
“I
shouldn’t allow it.” She finally says. She walks the length of the small room, wringing
her hands, and my hope rises when she faces me. “But if we can salvage this—”

           
“We can.”
I stand too quickly, upsetting the stool. It falls with a clunk and rocks back
and forth on its edge. “Let me talk with him and, I will convince him,” I
insist.

           
She
studies me a moment. “If you cannot, the Council will have no choice but to
dispose of him.”

           
“I understand.”

           
“We will
go at once.” She holds up a warning finger. “And then, you will not return to
the Pit again until you’re ordered to do so.”

           
I pause,
meeting her gaze. She means it, and my heart surges as if a fist has reached
straight through my chest cavity attempting to crush it, but I force myself to
nod.

           
“I will
do as you say.”

           
Satisfied,
Leah gestures toward the door. I take two steps before I turn back.

           
“Why Ash,
Leah? Of all the breeders to choose from, why her?”

           
“Her mate
died.” Leah’s answer is so abrupt that I stand frozen in my place. “And yours
came available.”

           
I stare
at her, astounded. “He just... died? Right there in the Pit?”

           
She
shrugs away my stunned expression. “It happens. And with our jailers’
short-lived uprising, it happened more often than usual.” A pause. “And don’t
think we rushed this decision. We deliberated much over these past few weeks as
to whom she should be paired with.” She rubs at her temples again. “Frankly, we
can’t afford anymore losses.” She tosses her head toward me. “Convince your
mate. And quickly.”

           
A nervous
tingling invades. The shortage of stock must be very serious. Serious enough
for Mona to have risked much to correct the problem. And Leah’s words only
magnify the urgency. My heart thumps a damning beat in my head as I work up the
courage to break
Chad
’s
heart in order to save his life.

eah agrees to give
Chad
and me complete privacy, which takes some convincing. In the end, she gives me
only half an hour to do so, claiming she must report to the Council by
noon
. I hurry along the path with a heavy pall
hanging over my heart, and I find great irony in the clouds, which hang low and
black in the sky.

           
I find
Chad
sitting on the edge of his mat, clutching my shampoo bottle in his fist. The
sight of him like this brings up my tears. A slanting ray of sunshine squeezes
in between the bamboo bars and falls across his face. He squints up at me when
I enter, but he doesn’t move from his spot.

           
“Another
girl came today,” he says flatly. He squeezes the bottle once before carefully
placing it into a small nook in the cave’s wall.

           
“I know.”

           
Puzzled,
he stares at me. “You knew she was coming? Why didn’t you tell me?”

           
I simply
shake my head, dropping my hands at my sides. He clasps his hands together, and
I cautiously sink down onto the mat beside him. It’s only then that I notice
four deep, scratches scraped into the side of his cheek. The gashes are red and
freshly raw, and very distinct in the slash of sunshine that illuminates them. My
heart tweaks with a flash of anger as I lay my palm over the ugly marks.

           
“She was
angry,” he explains, his eyes on the ground.

           
“
Chad
—”

           
“Don’t
say it.” He cuts me off and slides away.

           
I feel
suddenly vulnerable, and it’s not a feeling I’m accustomed to—not in the Pit.
In fact, in the Pit, I’ve always felt fearless and self-assured. It’s where I
belong—fulfilling my duty to the Village. But today, I feel nothing of this
confidence, and I’m not certain I’m equipped to do the thing that is expected
of me. How am I to ask
Chad
to disregard what we’ve recently discovered?
 
After so many months, so many hours, so many words passing between us—how?

           
The
minutes I’ve been allotted tick by, and I close my eyes and take a deep breath
before I do the thing that must be done.

           
“You have
no choice,” I tell him, and in light of my recent conversation with Leah, I
hate these four words more than ever.

           
“No. That
isn’t true,” he rebuts. “I made my choice.” When I simply look at him, he grabs
my hand, holds it up so that I have a clear view of his token. “We made our
choice. Did you forget?”

           
I stare at
him, a fear rising inside me, and I am very aware of how much this is my fault.
I put these notions in his head. I coaxed him out of this cave, I gave him a
reason to want a choice. Until I did so, he didn’t have any idea what it meant.
And in giving him a choice, I allowed myself to have one, too.

           
I chose
to open his heart—as unintentional as it may have been at first. But I am the
breeder; inside this cave, I am the one with the power—and I misused every bit
of it. It was wrong to place him in this predicament. And I have to fix it.

           
Quickly,
I pull away and stand, facing him. “Listen to me,” I reason. “You have to do
what they say. It will be better for both of us if you do.”

           
“Better
for us?” He’s on his feet. “How? I was assigned to you. How is it better?”

           
His voice
rises a notch. He doesn’t understand, and I step forward, a warning hand on his
chest. I glance over my shoulder at the gate as a real fear that someone is
listening consumes me for a moment, and then I refocus on his pain-filled eyes.

           
“What
we’ve done… it’s against the rules,” I whisper. “People have died for such
things.”

           
He covers
my hand with his own, pinning it against his chest. “I’ve been dying every day
for all of my life, Mia.” His eyes flood with pain. “Keeping you away will be
what kills me.”

           
“
Chad
.”
His name is a desperate whisper on my tongue, and my eyes burn as I fight
tears. “You know this is how things work in the Pit. You were assigned to
another breeder before I came of age. This will be no different.”

           
His eyes
flood with tears, and he takes my face in his palms. “This is different.
Before... there was no ‘you.’”

           
Desperate,
I tug on his wrists. “You are stock. They own you.” I pause before I painfully
add, “And I cannot bear the thought of what they will do to you if you don’t
comply.”

           
“She’s
mean.” His face contorts, his voice husky with wetness, and his eyes dance back
and forth, connecting with mine.

           
“I know,”
I whisper. I brush my fingertips along his cheek. “I know she is.”

           
I pause
for a long, tormented moment, chewing on my thoughts. Suddenly, I’m standing at
the foot of the raised platform in the clearing. Layla is tied to a pole, and
Mona has just slashed the throat of her mate. His chest is crimson wet, and the
image panics me. Shaking it away, I focus on
Chad
.
I must say something drastic. Something that will make him reconsider the
severity of refusing a breeder. Of refusing the Council. I look him straight in
the eyes and make myself speak.

           
“You will
do this,
Chad
.
Do you understand me?” I press, my voice growing harsh. “To save your life, you
will do this.”

           
He leans
away, a look of defeat distorting his features. I suck my bottom lip between my
teeth to staunch a new flood of tears that threatens. He begins to shake his
head, but I grab two fistfuls of his shirt and tug him against me, making him
look into my eyes, determined to let him see how serious I am. And as I survey
the pain in his eyes, it tears my heart in two to even think what next spills
out of my mouth.

           
“If you
don’t, I will not come again. Ever.” A fresh tear tumbles down my cheek, but I
keep talking. “I will ask for a new assignment after this baby is born, and you
will never see me again.”

           
It is an
empty threat, truly. If he doesn’t comply, it won’t matter what I say. They
will kill him, and I will never see him again anyway, but when his lower lip
begins to quiver, I see I’ve made my point. For a split second, we are no
longer
Chad
and
Mia. We have reverted—to breeder and mate. His face suddenly seems to crush in
on itself with pain, and his hand—still covering my clenched fist—tightens.

           
“That
feeling in my chest—it hurts.” His eyes slice into me like two shards of broken
glass. “Is love supposed to hurt?”

           
I drown
in the pools that float in his dark eyes, and I can say nothing. Because
honestly… I have no idea.

           
Thunder
suddenly growls in the distance as if to seal our fate.

*

           
And so,
it is done.

           
At first,
I’m simply numb, and I can’t sort out my feelings. My head tells me that to
preserve my own safety, I’ve done the right thing. To save
Chad
,
I’ve done the right thing. And the old Mia—the one who was simply a breeder
bent on duty without any fuss—she would have agreed.

           
But my
heart stands in the way.

           
I wish
Kate were here. She would know what I should do.

           
Every
day, I endure Ash’s gloating. And though I don’t receive the lashing she thinks
I deserve, her haughtiness proves that she believes whole-heartedly she’s won.
It sickens me.

           
I stop
going to the dining hall, choosing to eat from the community kettle that serves
the eight hogans in my section. It doesn’t take long for my loneliness to
return more prevalently than ever.

           
I cry
myself to sleep nearly every night the first week. Oddly, I miss my treks to
the Pit, and I miss
Chad
.
I miss our
midnight
vigils. I miss our
talks. I miss falling asleep in his arms.

           
I miss
the feel of his skin on mine.

           
I toy
with the leather token as a tear slides down my cheek, and I wonder how things
are with him—if he’s adjusting to this new role. This thought eats at me,
because again, I know I’m to blame for his having to adjust at all. Stock don’t
adjust; they simply do what they are conditioned to do.

           
It
bothers me to think that his life could be in danger because of my
carelessness. I’m angry for letting myself succumb to my feelings, and I fight
them now, trying to turn them off. I even go so far as to remove the leather
drawstring from my thumb. It lays beside me on my mat for only ten seconds before
I struggle to one-handedly retie it.

           
I am
ruined.

           
The days
roll by; Ash gloats; my heart groans as it fights me…

           
And there
is no word of
Chad
.
 

*

           
 
As much as I’d prefer to wallow inside my
hogan, it isn’t practical, and eventually, I’m forced to return to some sort of
semblance of my village life. There are my chores, after all, which will not be
overlooked by the Council. And I must think about the baby now. If I want to
deliver a healthy child who might be spared to become part of our community, I
must eat, get sunshine, be active.

           
My
assignment today… to gather potatoes. I retrieve a basket from the preparation
area behind the dining hall and take the path that leads to the west field.

           
The
sunshine is warm on my back as I kneel in the dirt, digging up the largest
potatoes and leaving others to ripen further. Other women silently work around
me. I toss a glance at the gardeners who busy themselves with tilling one field
over, and the fear of starving to death suddenly has no merit. And the longer
Kate is gone, the fire sparked by her words begins to dissipate, and life in
the Village resembles what it once did.

           
On the
cooks’ orders, twenty-seven full baskets of potatoes are needed, and when the
sun is past the
noon
mark, I
carefully balance the final potato on top of my load and stand. Dirt cakes the
underneath of my fingernails and the creases of my palms as I take the basket
up into my arms and move toward the path. I don’t get far before Ash, arms crossed
over her chest, blocks my way. I narrow my eyes.

           
“I’ve
come to fetch you to the Council,” she announces. I pause, the basket balanced
on my hip, and a strange sensation begins to batter my heart. I blink once.

           
“Why?”

           
Ash takes
a step, a belligerent glint in her eyes. “Because they told me to.”

           
I shake
my head confused. “And why would they send you for me?”

           
She huffs
indignantly, studies a fingernail a moment before she answers. “My mate is
missing. And the Council seems to think you may know something about it.”

           
The air
suddenly seems to rush backward and away as this news floats between us. The
astonishment smeared across my face causes her to drop her hands to her sides,
tilt her head curiously, and squint at me.

           
“You
don’t know where he’s gone, do you?”

           
“No,” I
answer, a panic rising in my chest. “Why would he go anywhere?”

           
“Yes.”
She narrows her eyes at me, her malice suddenly back. “Why would he?”

           
“He’s not
in his cave?” I brush past her, hiking the basket a little higher up my hip and
scurrying up the path as fast as my heavy load will allow.

           
“Didn’t I
just stay this?” she snaps. She follows close on my heels, working to keep with
my pace. “You know, this is all Kate’s fault.”

           
I toss
her an angry glance over my shoulder. “That’s lovely, Ash. Blame someone who
isn’t here to defend herself.”

           
“And whose
fault is that?” she asks. “She carved her own fate.”

           
At least
someone did, I think. I cringe and squint upward.

           
“Her
foolish ideas have tainted too many of the women,” she continues. “The Council
is becoming very agitated.”

           
I have to
wonder if she tells the truth, especially after Leah told me the Council was
beginning to get a handle on the situation.

           
We enter
the Village. I drop my load of potatoes at the kitchen door and douse my hands
in a vat of cleansing water while Ash waits impatiently. And by the time we
arrive at the Great Hall, my stomach is so twisted in knots, I fear I’ll never
be able to untangle it.