I try not to react as Mark says that. Sometimes we blame ourselves. It’s natural.
Our people go missing and turn up as bodies, and we all think back to the last things we said to them, wondering if maybe something we said drove them to misbehave.
The clock on the wall ticks away as I wait for Mark to talk.
“I was with her, Rem.” Mark has the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes with his elbows on his knees, but he still talks through the shudders.
“I was right there. We were together, out by the South Wall.”
I know exactly where he means. There’s a place by that wall where some old walls still exist. They’re lower, so it’s where the shadows are darkest.
Not many of us get to be teenagers here, but the ones that do sometimes…hook up, I guess…and that’s the best place not to be found. I didn’t know Mark and Eva were that close.
I don’t ask him what happened. He’ll tell me, or he won’t. I find that when people are sad, which they are a lot here, questions don’t help.
“There was a surge.” Mark still has his hands pressed into his eyes like he’s trying to blind himself. “We both felt it. And she…she lit up like a firework.
“She was laughing, Rem, actually laughing like we weren’t here, like we were free. It was so beautiful.”
He starts to shake, so I scoot closer and press my shoulder to his. Sitting down is the only time I can manage it; he’s so tall now. But it makes sense about Eva.
She was a will-o’-the-wisp by birth, and she should glow like lamplight. But not here, not while they suppress us. But with a surge suddenly released…
I wonder about what the surge had done to Mark. He actually liked having the magic sucked out of him. Few did, but they taught him about what he is and what he could do to people.
It’s probably just to make him afraid, but it works. At least Eva was harmless.
“Laughing,” Mark starts again. “Do you remember the last time one of us laughed like that? She started flickering around me, disappearing and reappearing like it was a game.
“She was so pure and joyful that I didn’t even want to… I didn’t take anything from her.”
So it hadn’t affected him. Mark is what they call a sin-eater. But someone so happy, with no guilt or fear… She had nothing that his internal force would want to take.
“Then she was gone.” Mark takes his hands away from his eyes, looking blankly at the far wall.
“I thought for a second she was just playing, just hiding, but the smell came, and I knew. I knew they’d taken her.”
The smell. We don’t know why, but when someone is taken, there’s always a smell of burned sugar in the air for a few seconds. We all associate it with death.
“They took her, and they killed her, and it’s my fault. I convinced her to go out with me. I…I wanted to see the stars. Sometimes that makes the dreams go away.”
He drops his head back against the wooden paneling he’s leaning against, more tears leaking out as he squeezes his eyes shut.
Magic is nothing more than a curse, I think to myself sourly. It makes people so sad that they don’t have it, but they can’t control it when they do.
Whatever I am, if I am anything, I hope it stays dormant. I can’t be the one to lose my mind like that. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want anybody else to die because of me.
I can’t face that, not alone.
Sometimes I think I’m not alone. Sometimes Mark understands me. But he doesn’t hate magic; he hates himself. For the most part, I’m fine with who I am.
I’m not interesting or dynamic. I’m just Remy. The quiet, haunted girl with the big eyes and pale hair. And I hate it here, I do. But one day, I’m hoping they’ll be done with me and I can leave.
Not like Mark. He thinks that the only way out is to take the step, to give yourself to death.
I shudder and press closer to him. It’s days like this when I see the coldness deep in his eyes. I can see the idea forming that maybe if he died, things would be easier for everyone.
I wish I knew what to say to help him. I can never form the words properly to explain that I’d miss him, that he’s like a brother to me and I can’t stand to see him hurting like this.
He’s worth more than this place, and he doesn’t hurt people, only himself. But as soon as I open my mouth, the words die on my tongue, and I’m left staring and gawping like a goldfish.
“Don’t,” is all I can manage. He looks over at me, a deep sadness in his eyes. Without his glasses, they look so dark I can almost see the stars in them. I blink stupidly and force myself to talk.
“Don’t hurt yourself. Please.”
He opens his mouth to exclaim in shock but then closes it again. I go back to being silent, trying to keep even my breathing down to the quietest it could be.
Silent people don’t misbehave. They don’t get noticed. I notice Mark still staring at me. There isn’t disapproval or hate in his eyes, just a sad sort of interest.
“Five words,” he said finally, in a small voice. “I’ll bet that’s today’s record.”
From anyone else, that would sound like poking fun. But not from Mark. This is one of the moments where he gets me.
I didn’t mention that I’d spoken to a Daughter. I speak when they ask me to speak, because that’s what they trained me to do.
I sigh and burrow into my sweater, pulling my hands back into the sleeves. I had a dream once that I was in a field, in the sunshine.
Maybe there I could talk to people. Maybe there…maybe then I wouldn’t be afraid anymore.
Neither of us moves for a long time. Mark’s steady breathing continues beside me. His hands still press against his eyes as if he can wipe away the memory.
Eventually, I nod off, my chin resting on my knees. In my dream, I’m lying on grass, looking at the sky. It’s dark, but there are no stars.
I can see into the endless blackness, wondering if I could simply get lost in there forever. My dream self then sits up suddenly and looks in front of me.
An owl has landed on the grass by my feet. I’m unconcerned that it’s so big. I thought owls were smaller birds, but this one looks at me over my knees with its huge, amber eyes.
It feels like it’s looking into me, reading my every thought. It has gray feathers that flow down to scaly, clawed feet.
Each feather looks like it’s made of smoke, and I want to touch them, but that seems rude. It clicks its beak, and my gaze flicks back to the eyes.
When I look into them, the rest of the world seems fuzzy and unimportant.
I lean forward to it, drawn in by the fathomless orbs. “Can you help me?” I don’t know why I ask that, but I do.
The owl clicks its beak at me before responding in a human voice. “That depends. What do you need?”
I tilt my head to one side, and it does the same thing. What do I need? The grass and the sky here seem nice, and I’m not afraid like normal. I don’t think I need anything in particular.
“You need to tell me what you need. You need to understand,” the bird says, ruffling its feathers regally. I don’t answer. I don’t have an answer, and it shuffles its feet.
“If you don’t need help, then why are you here?”
I can’t look away from it as I think. I know somewhere deep inside that I’m unhappy, but I don’t know why.
There’s a knot of tension that suddenly thumps back into my chest like it’s always been there, and I gasp like it constricts my breathing.
The owl stretches out its huge wings, and I see that the feathers on them are starting to turn inky black and melting into the endless sky. It speaks once more, its claws digging into the grass.
“Be careful, child. You need to know what you need. And for always, forever, you should fear what lives in the darkness.”
I reach out to stop it from leaving, and my eyes fly open, my hand stretching out into the air.
I choke on a scream and pull my hand back so fast that my elbow smacks painfully into the wall behind me as I see what’s in the room. There’s a body on the floor in front of me.
Long, dark hair spilling out across the floor like water. I can’t take my eyes off her as I reach for Mark. But there’s nothing there. I tear my eyes away to look for him, but he’s gone.
I look back at the body and freeze as I see that it’s moving. There’s twitching, like it was just asleep and is waking up.
I have momentary relief that she’s not dead, but that vanishes when her face turns to me.
It’s Eva. But it’s also not. Her eyes are now milky white, and her once pretty smile is now a slack mouth full of rotten and strangely sharpened teeth.
A line of blood trickles over her lip and onto the floor in a steady drip that somehow seems to fill the whole room, echoing off the walls.
I haven’t moved, but her nostrils flair, and a hand, still twitching like there’s a current running through her, starts to push toward me across the floor.
The skin across the hand is cracked and oozing both blood and a yellow liquid, as the fingers scrabble to get closer to me. I can feel my heart in my throat, but I still don’t scream.
I try to back further away from her just as that rotting, bleeding hand grips my foot with a strength I didn’t expect.
Having gotten a hold of me, Eva makes a strangled noise, and blood pours from her mouth now, splattering onto the floor in a red, clotted torrent.
Usually, blood makes me nauseous, but that doesn’t seem to be strong enough to conquer the fear that has settled in me like a storm cloud.
She pushes herself up with her free hand, her torso now pressed against my shins, and her head lolls onto my knees. She makes the noise again, and more blood spatters onto my lap.
From this close, I can see that her eyes aren’t pure white and that there is a tiny dot of black in the center.
She’s focused on me, and I can feel her ragged breath on my face as she stares at me, those rotting, pointed teeth looking more dangerous now that she’s touching me.
I should scream, or move, or throw her off and try to run, but I can’t. I want to control my fear, to conquer it and be heroic, but I just can’t.
I’ve spent so many years hiding in the silence, believing that stillness and quiet would save me, and now…and now all I can do is watch as her tongue slides out of her mouth and runs across the fabric on my knees.
For the first time in my life, I wish for magic. I wish that something in me would blossom and I’d be able to protect myself, save myself.
This isn’t how the Daughters take people. There is no swiftness, no smell of burned sugar.
Just rotting breath and a wheezing corpse spilling blood onto me and pushing her head closer and closer to mine, a ghoulish smile on her dead face.
I hear a door slam, a screaming whistle, and then…then I wake.
Or do I? I’m sitting bolt upright in my bed, gulping down air like I’ve been deprived of it.
I look around wildly, looking for Eva. But I can barely see anything in the darkness. Darkness? It was the morning when I was with Mark. How have I lost a whole day? How did I get back to bed?
I try to get up, but my legs are tangled in the sheets, and all I manage to do is flop ungracefully onto the floor. I scramble away from the simple cot beds, worrying that she is underneath them.
I can still smell her decaying breath, and I get up, find the door in the dark, and sprint away down the corridor.
It’s forbidden to leave the dorms at night, but I need to be somewhere with light. I almost hit the wall at the end of the corridor, and I catch myself with my arms.
My palms are against one of the many portraits of Mother, lit with soft yellow beams of light that have no source. I look up at the picture and recoil as her dark hair reminds me of Eva’s.
I back up down the corridor and put my back against the wall and my head in my hands.
What is happening? I could put it down to a bad dream, but I don’t remember anything between talking to Mark this morning and waking up in bed.
I look down at myself, and there’s no blood on me, but I feel dirty, like it left a permanent mark through to my skin. I scrub my hands across my waist, trying to wipe the forgotten stains clean.
I wipe and wipe, but I stay clean and the feeling of grime doesn’t leave me.
“Eva’s dead,” I mentally tell myself unconvincingly. “She’s dead and gone, and you imagined it.”
I’m not sure how long I stand still, but soon enough I’m cold, my bare feet spreading chill through my body from the cold, concrete floor.
Having not seen anything else unusual, I talk myself into going back to bed. If anything else happens, there are more girls in the room. As long as I can scream this time, I should be okay.
I pad back down the corridor toward the dormitory door, keeping a lookout for both Eva and one of the Daughters as I go. I see nothing.
As I slip into the darkened dorm, I stand for a few seconds leaning against the door, letting my eyes adjust to the gloom.
I’ve had the same bed since I was twelve years old, and I could find it blindfolded, but I want to see the rest of the room before I move.
Under the beds should be empty, but that would make it so easy for another body to be hidden there. Which is ridiculous, because I must have imagined it.
Magic is all well and good, but nobody has ever mentioned zombies. Surely somebody would have mentioned it by now.
I’m shaking now, but not from the cold.
There’s weak light from outside glimmering through the windows set up high into the wall, giving the top half of the room an eerie glow while the rest sinks into the grays and blacks of shadowed night.
I want to look under the beds, but it’s too dark to see anything, and we have no way to make light after the Daughters turn the lamps out.
Finally, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, I slink toward my bed, always listening for the sound of rattling breathing.
I sit gingerly on my bed, whipping my feet quickly off the floor in case something grabs them. I feel like a little kid afraid of the dark, but I can’t get the fear to unknot from my stomach and throat.
I wrap the meager blanket around my shoulders and sit back against the metal railing that constitutes a headboard. The sounds around me are all so familiar after this long.
Three beds to my right, Emerie snores quietly, and she’ll be lying on her back with one foot off the bed. Directly opposite me, Alice will have an arm thrown across her eyes and her mouth wide open.
Molly will be at the furthest end of the row to my left, curled in a tight ball like a cat. Directly to my left is Teagan, who has royal blue skin and large purple eyes.
I can see a white patch on her face, pale against her skin.
But with the familiar noises and the lack of tortured breathing and with no terrifying drip of blood, the tension in me starts to abate. Maybe it was all a bad dream and I’ll be okay when I wake up.
But I still can’t bring myself to lie down. I stare into the night, waiting for sleep to claim me.
I don’t know how long I sit still, but soon enough I awake to a morning glow streaming in through the windows and people moving around me. I’m still sitting up, my head leaning back against the wall.
I look around me, not making eye contact with anybody, as I’m silently glad that nothing else disturbed my sleep. I don’t remember any dreams this time.
There’s a rustling to my left, and I look over to see Teagan sitting up and peeling the gauze from her face.
Red marks stand stark against her blue skin, and she runs her fingers over them, her nails matching the scratches perfectly.
She sees me looking and casts her eyes down, putting the covering back over the marks. She’s not the first to try this sort of thing.
The Daughters have a way of getting in your head, making you believe your magic is evil, that your whole being needs to be purified.
Mark felt it in his desire to cleanse people of their sins. Teagan found hers in the color of her skin, making her want to tear it off sometimes.
As I don’t seem to have any magical inclinations, I don’t have inbuilt hatred of myself. I just want to stay out of the way. As I turn away from Teagan, a figure appears at the foot of my bed.
Molly is an inch shorter than me, but only because she’s a few years younger. She’s stockier, but it’s all muscle. Apparently werewolves are just built like that.
She looks at me with eyes slightly narrowed, hands on hips.
Even through her overlarge nightgown and her curly blonde hair sticking up all around her head like a cloud in the morning light, she looks quite ferocious.
Her eyes are a deep brown, making it look like she has only whites and solid pupils. She narrows those eyes at me.
“Is it true?”
I say nothing. I don’t need to. Molly will continue regardless of what I say. Which she does.
“Is it true that Mark was with Eva when she died?”
I don’t know why Molly would know that, unless somebody was watching. My money is on a tiny girl called Fiona.
She’s a sprite, and even though she’s powerless, she manages to hide herself away in trees and such. But anyway, I don’t like the accusatory tone Molly’s using about Mark.
She narrows her eyes further and leans toward me. “Why wouldn’t they take him as well? What’s so special about your stupid boyfriend.”
“He’s not her boyfriend.” Emerie joins us now. Her nightshirt looks pale as a ghost against her dark skin. She’s got her arms folded as she stares Molly down.
“And even if he were, we don’t blame each other for people getting taken, Molly. You know the rules. Just back off.”
Spots of color appear high on Molly’s cheeks. “Shut up, Em. You’re only defending him because you fancy him.”
Emerie’s mouth drops open. I refrain from rolling my eyes. After me, and since Eva isn’t here anymore, Molly is now the closest age to Em, with Molly being fifteen and Emerie being sixteen.
Eva was also sixteen, and I’m the eldest girl at seventeen. The others are all eleven or younger. We’re the only ones that have made it. Teagan is now watching them with her violet eyes wide.
She’s only seven, and she hates people fighting even more than I do.
“Yeah?” Em has found her voice again. “And would you be yelling at Eva if Mark had been the one taken?” She smiles slyly and doesn’t give Molly a chance to answer.
“No, you wouldn’t, and don’t say you would. You’d be glad because then he’d be out of the way, and maybe Eva would finally notice you.”
Molly steps closer to her, looking up at the taller girl. “If I had my powers, I’d bite you.”
Emerie sniffs regally. “You wouldn’t get close to me, puppy. I come from a bloodline of queens.”
Molly is furious now, but there’s nothing she can do to Em unless she physically attacks her, and she wouldn’t dare. The Daughters won’t have it.
Molly’s hands are by her side now and are clenched into fists. It seems like everyone in the room is collectively holding their breath.
For the little ones, this seems to be both terrifying and exhilarating.
By her age and the fact I’m little more than a shadow on the walls, Emerie is the de facto leader of the girls.
I’m not sure what type of magic she has, but she’s convinced that she’s royalty, even possibly a child of the gods. That’s fine by me. She can rule all she wants.
With her golden, canted eyes, tall frame, and shaven head, she certainly does look more regal than the rest of us.
Molly is staring up at her with her nostrils flaring before she suddenly rounds on me. “If it’s his fault that she’s dead, then I’ll make him pay. You tell him that, you mute freak.”
She knows I’m not actually mute, but it’s the most used insult for me that Molly had. She stalks off from all of us now, back down the row to her bed.
She sits primly on the opposite side, arms folded, and stares at the wall.
I look back to Emerie, who watches Molly with a satisfied look on her face, then turns to me and gives me a nod before going back to her bed. The alpha successfully defends her leadership.
There’s barely anyone here who remembers that I used to talk a lot more, and that’s because they’re all dead. Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and focus on survival.
It’s what I’d say if anyone asked. Instead, they think I lived this long because I’m just a human who was here by accident and I’m being studied or something.
Maybe that’s even true, but I still stay quiet to make sure.
Some people have different tactics. Some people have almost worshipped Mother and her Daughters. Some people try to escape. Some choose open defiance.
None have made it past the age of eighteen. Raj had been the oldest, eighteen and a half…before, one day, he was found hanging from a tree.
It looked like he’d done it himself, but we all doubted that.
So I’ll let them have their squabbles and just stay out of it as much as I can. I grab my towel from the rack I share with Teagan and slip out of bed.
I turn to the left and head toward one of the communal bathrooms along the opposite wall between some of the beds. We have one for toilets and one for showers.
As I walk, I see one bed where the occupant hasn’t gotten up yet. She has the blanket pulled up to her forehead, and all you can see is a mass of dark hair across the pillow.
It reminds me of Eva’s body so much that I stop walking in a sudden panic. Somebody stumbles into my back, and I scramble away from them.
I turn, and it’s Teagan behind me, clutching the towel to her chest as she looks at my face with startled fear. I look back at the bed so fast I crick my neck and make myself look closer.
The hair is black, not the dark brown Eva’s was. The hands clutching the blanket are also small, far too small to be Eva’s.
I take a breath and look back to Teagan, who blinks at me with those oversized eyes. I nod miserably and start walking again.
The bathrooms are just as grim as the rest of the compound. More concrete with drains in the floor. Shower heads are clustered four to a pole with partitions between them in a diamond.
I stand under the perpetually lukewarm water and try to wash the fear away. My hair sticks to my forehead, and soap drips into my eyes.
I scrub at them with my hands, but the stinging seems so…normal that it makes me feel like I’m not going crazy. I bet my eyes wouldn’t sting in a dream, if that’s what it was.
The shower is as disappointing as usual, and then I wrap myself in the old, scratchy towel and join the huddle of girls at the large mirror.
It was not really a mirror but a large sheet of shining metal. I’d always guessed this was because we couldn’t break metal but could probably break glass if we were determined.
I stand and look at my reflection. I brush my hair vertically into a tiny mohawk and let it droop damply from there. We don’t have any way to dry hair, which is mostly why I keep it short.
Almost everyone’s hair is longer than mine, even the boys’. Only Emerie’s is shorter, because she gets rid of it completely rather than leaving a scant inch or two like I do.
There’s nothing else to do with my reflection. Emerie is complaining that she needs to reshave her head, and she’ll need to make another appointment.
We’re not allowed blades, obviously, but one of the Daughters captured an adult nymph at some point who is brought in to tie us down and cut our hair.
Otherwise it might grow long enough to hang ourselves with, I suppose.
It’s the same with the boys, but a Daughter comes in every morning to shave the faces of the ones who make it through puberty.
Mark gets pinned to a wall every few days by a Daughter with a razor. Maybe that’s why he’s less afraid of them than I am. If they wanted to kill him, they’ve had plenty of opportunities.
I get dressed in a clean uniform, putting on two pairs of socks to try and keep my feet warm, as, regardless of the weather, my feet are always cold.
On her bed, Teagan is trying, and failing, to plait her long green hair. I sigh and reach over to help. This was a pretty normal routine for us.
Teagan’s hair is long, but she cried when they first cut it. She appeared in that bed one morning just over a year ago. Her hair reached to her thighs then.
Apparently that’s normal with water folk. But a Daughter cut it to shoulder length, and Teagan cried for days. She’s interesting like that.
She lost any home, family, and freedom, and the only thing she had left was her hair, then they took it from her.
Now they let her grow it to just below her shoulder blades before they hack it off again.
She doesn’t get to see the nymph because she made such a fuss about it the first time.
I tap her fondly on the head when I’m done, and she follows me as I get up. I pull on my overlarge sweater and head to the door for breakfast.
Deaths, dreams, and zombies aside, maybe this would just be a normal day.
Well, normal for us anyway.
