Short story written by Rory Hawkins.
Azzie limps into the clearing without a word, still clutching the knife. Her lip’s swollen and purple. Thin fabric and skin split in a raw line across her leg. It’s not bleeding – she must’ve closed it. But most of all, Azzie reeks something awful.
My own cut still throbs from where the wire caught it. It’s numbed since she pressed her hand to it, pain blooming with her Talent: Scream and I’ll kick you in the bits. Now don’t move a muscle till I get back. I’ll get rid of the rest of the adults.
I rub the wet from my eyes, blink away the dirt. I hate being called Kay the crybaby. She can’t see this.
She doesn’t – Azzie steps over the backpack and what we have, lowering herself to sit beside me. The knife gets tossed at my feet. She rips a silver packet open and tears through what’s inside.
What happened to the rest of adults? Do we still need to run? Where do we go now? She’s older, she has to know, but I can’t ask without gagging. “You stink,” I say behind my hand. “Like when someone’s burnt food. But worse.”
No reply; Azzie brushes the crumbs off her dirty whites and grabs another packet. My feet are cold in the leaf litter and the knife’s even colder, so I nudge it away with my big toe. It’s not actually mine, and I don’t want it. I fiddle with the points of my ears, waiting for Azzie to finish eating. I watch her, the way the stars and moon send light teasing down the lines on her right arm. Her hair is cut fuzzy short, like mine, but her eyes and skin are so different, dark and warm like caramels. Even her ears are a weird shape to the other kids; why so round?
Finally, she speaks. “We’ll have to stay here tonight, Kay. Don’t want to, but have to. Don’t think I can walk much further.” Azzie puts a finger to the packet corner and the thing begins to trail thin lines of grey. “You and Mo have… good eyes – you guys keep watch.” She’s right: I could see her miles away in the night.
“But Mo’s already asleep. He stopped crying about his head and his chest and went to sleep,” I tell her. Falling from the wall had knocked the wind out of him and given him an egg-sized lump on his forehead.
Azzie squints at me with amber-brown eyes. She turns to look at Mo behind us; his small body on its side curled even smaller in hollow of the old tree we’d found. “You tried waking him up? Case we need to run.”
I nod. “He didn’t though. He’s real cold so I left him.” Azzie runs her tongue over her teeth and nods along to what I’m saying – I must’ve done something smart. I can feel my face turning red so I look at my feet. “I think that- Azzie… it’s too cold. Not just for him. It’s better at-“
I don’t see her hand coming; my left side stings as she towers over me. Her words hiss from behind bared teeth. “No! We are never going back, Kay. Adults are evil. Understand me?”
“Why’d you…? You!” I’m not Mo, practically a baby. How dare she! The adults in long coats never treated me this way – not like the ones that chased us, not like Azzie. I’m almost as old as her. Now it’s her turn in the dirt, getting kicked and punched. I kick the knife away from us. Azzie snarls like the dogs the adults keep, struggling at the air around me until something connects.
Then she’s latched on tight. I try to break her grip on my arm but in seconds it’s too much. It’s like before on my cut but so much worse: heat grows to blunt pain, numbing under her hand and shooting all over my body.
I can hear myself crying: “Stop! Please, stop!”
I smell smoke.
I see the edge of the knife, too far to reach. My Talent starts to think. Knife. Handle, blade, point-at-the-tip. Knife.
And I feel the metal in my free hand. I’m holding a knife against Azzie’s right arm, the one that won’t let go. This is my knife, and no-one else can call it but me. I press it into her skin, seeing her eyes stretch in pain.
She lets go, and in a flurry of limbs pulls away. Despite the searing in my arm, I can feel myself grinning, holding what I made between us. Azzie’s eyes flick from the thing in my hands to the knife on the ground. Then to Mo in the tree hollow. Amber-brown pupils settle on me. Her mouth is bloody smear: “You wanna go back to them?”
Would I? Would we be able to follow Azzie to wherever she said she came from? Maybe she will walk forever, but Mo’s such a baby. Would it really be like she said?
“Azzie, I don’t want to-“
She makes a move and I flinch – before I know it, she’s used the moment and is in my face, pushing me back again, knocking the knife from my hands. It vanishes as it hits the leaf litter, like it was never there at all.
Now a monster’s in front of me, lines of burning red running down its arms, ending in hands full of angry fire. The heat blisters away at what I know of the cold. A hand reaches for me, promising to make me smell of smoke forever. My eyes snap shut, but I can still see so much light.
Then from behind the harsh brightness, I hear a sob. Then another. Gently, the fire in Azzie’s hands peters out. I open one eye, then the other. A bright smudge still covers my vision. Am I blind? My hands find the way forward – to a girl sitting curled in the dirt. I don’t know what to do, should I hold her like adults did for kids? That’s what I end up doing, stroking the bristles of her hair till she stops. My sight clears and Azzie's staring straight at me, dirty streaks running down her cheeks from all the tears.
“See? See these?” She bears her arms, the shining, dark lines running their length like trails of smoke. “The adults you like so much – doctors – put them there, opened me up and put them under my skin,” she sniffs. “Before the GARDEN, I had a home. I shouldn’t be here. I’m not like you or Mo or even most of the other kids they keep there.”
She pinches the point of my ear and I wince. “You’re all so different to everyone. And before this I couldn’t do any of the things you can do: I didn’t have a Talent. I didn’t make things appear, like keys and knives and falling trees. Whispers didn’t tell me which way people were coming from,” she says looking over at Mo.
We sit there for a moment, both of us hurt and snivelling. I can’t think of anything else to do – so I crawl over and pick up the real knife. “Here,” I say, holding it out to her. “Take this. I don’t need it so you should have it.”
“Thanks. Kay, I’m sorry,” says Azzie, wiping her eyes.
“Yeah, me too.”
“I shouldn’t have got you or Mo to help me, or come with me.”
“No, you were right. The adults only pretend to be kind. You’re real Talent is seeing that they were really just evil monsters.” For the first time ever, I think I see her smile.
The three of us huddle in our tree hollow, little Mo in between me and Azzie. We decided to try and warm Mo up. It’s so cold in the forest that we can see each other’s breaths, like we’re making baby clouds. We stare at each other over the fuzz of Mo’s hair till keeping our eyes open is too much.
It’s light when I wake to the sound of dogs. I shake Azzie’s shoulder till she opens a bleary eye. They both shoot wide-open when she hears the barking. In a blur, Azzie’s on her feet and at the backpack scooping handfuls of leaves and food packets in.
“Mo! Mo, you need to get up!” I say, jostling him. How can he still be sleeping?
Azzie’s hand’s on my shoulder. “We need to run!”
“Azzie, Mo won’t wake up. He’s still cold.”
She puts a caramel hand to Mo’s pale neck and nods. “I’ll take care of him. Go!”
The sound of trampling adults and snapping dogs is closer and closer with every heartbeat. “But-“
“No! I’m the stronger one so I’ll take care of Mo,” she shouts, pulling me to my feet. “Start running. Don’t look back, I’ll be right behind you.”
I start running. I listen to Azzie and don’t look back. She has to be right behind me. I stumble down a hill, barking dogs and adults too close, the same acrid stench of smoke at my nostrils.
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