A Village

It was brisk outside so I took my time walking to the school. My dulled reflection dutifully walked alongside me in the windows of the main street stores, dark and grimy. Walter walked on the opposite sidewalk, pulling a cooler behind him on a dolly. I hoped that meant we’d have some fresh meat tonight. I turned onto the narrow drive that led up the hill to the school. The town’s population had hardly been larger than our own little group. The school was hardly more than another house.

I pulled the doors open and unwrapped my scarf from my face, dabbing away at the condensation on my lips and nose. I heard speaking from down the hall, in the library. I passed the classrooms and did not look inside. I never looked inside. I stood quietly in the double doorway of the library, listening intently. I watched Lara, her brows knit, looking so serious as she absorbed everything Priya had to say. She had been that way since we got her, drawing in everything she could, ravenous to know, to experience.

Priya glanced up at me and I shook my head, bringing a finger to my lips. But it was too late. Walter had taught her well, and she was even more perceptive to lines of sight and body language. “Agatha!” Lara said with an energy that warmed my heart as much as it broke it. “Is it time already?” she asked and I nodded.

“Thank you, Priya,” Lara said and threw her arms around Priya’s neck. Affection of this manner was forbidden but we had all been unable to resist a hug or a pinched cheek as she had grown these last 18 years. Priya handed her a book and a pen, her final gift. I walked down to them and squeezed Priya as well. She patted my back gently, suddenly the one who was consoling me when I had meant it the other way around.

We said goodbye one last time and I shut the doors to the library behind us. I watched Priya’s face disappear as the doors met and clasped shut. Lara and I walked out of the school in solemn silence. We had made it well down the main street before the black smoke reached the sky. I told Lara not to look back.

“What did you learn today?” I asked as we turned down a street that would eventually lead us to our cul-de-sac. Such an asinine question. Something my own mother had asked me so many times I had only answered her with an eyeroll and a huff by the end of things.

“How I came to be here,” Lara said matter of factly.

“And how is that, exactly?” I asked. Lara liked for a conversation to be a challenge, for each person to pull the topics from one another.

“What? You don’t know?” she asked, smiling.

“Pretend I don’t,” I said. “It’s something you’ll have to get used to telling when you get there.”

“18 years ago, on this day, I was born. And 18 years ago today I was brought to this town with these people to raise me. A family of 13. No mothers, no fathers, no siblings. Just family.”

“Why those 13?” I asked. The cold wind on my face made me realize I had left my scarf at the school. Not that it mattered much now.

“Experts in various fields. They would be able to give me a well-rounded education. Not only mentally, but physically, spiritually. 12 different masteries, all of which were distilled into me.”

“I thought you said there were 13?”

“And one more, a guardian. Someone to watch over me at all times. To make sure no harm ever befell me. And to constantly quiz me on things she already knew.” She linked her arm with mine and squeezed. “Were families really so small, before I mean?” she asked quietly.

“Most the time, yes. But there were also lots of ideas about what a family should and could be and how many people of what kind.” I said. “But there were also the families we made by choice. The ones we considered our own, even if biology played no hand in it.” Ahead lay our street, so I gently removed her arm from mine, something that took far more strength than I knew I had. “It was a bit of a mess, to be truthful,” I said.

“So I’ve learned,” Lara said quietly. “People found any reason to be cruel to one another, didn’t they?”

“Again, you try to paint in broad strokes,” I said, stopping in the road. “The world before was incredibly harsh and dangerous. People were harsh and dangerous. But there was also boundless love. Kindness that was borne of nothing more than being alive.”

“Will my new home be like that?” she asked and for the first time since she was a little girl, I felt fear in her voice.

“I really don’t know,” I told her. “We could only finish the work set before us, and it is nearly done.”

“You could all come with me,” she said and reluctantly followed me onto the final street, a gentle hill ending in a round circle of cracked asphalt. “Maybe it’s not too late to get Priya-”

I clasped a hand on either of her shoulders and squeezed gently. “You are all of us, together. We got this much more of our lives because of you.” I thought back to directly after. Chaos. Blood. Death and rot. A black sedan pulling up beside me as I beat a man to death for trying to steal my shoes. They had a job for me, something safe, somewhere not too far from the city. Running water and electricity. But it had an expiration date. “We knew what we got ourselves into. Priya chose her own end, but I’m choosing to stay with you as long as I can.” I let her go and stepped back, apologizing. She patted my shoulder and smiled sadly. She continued walking, waving to the instructors that were carrying things out to the cul-de-sac.

A long table had been set with a birthday feast, as had been tradition for Lara’s birthday, but this was even grander. The finale. Walter had gotten fresh meat after all, I could smell its burning fat on a nearby fire. On the table were fruits and vegetables out of season, the bounty delivered by black boxes that rained down from the sky once a month. The others were there, standing in the finest clothes they could muster. Rachel, who had taught Lara how to cook and bake, revealed a pristine cake that looked like it had jumped out of a magazine. She must have saved her allotment of flour and sugar for some time.

We all ate well. Rachel had fermented some fruit into a crass approximation of wine. I was happy for it. I hadn’t been drunk in who knows how many years. We quickly began to lose the sun and even the alcohol could not keep the chill at bay. We heard it then, the chopping blades of the helicopter that usually delivered food, come to take Lara away.

“Thank you,” Lara said, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. “Oh, thank you all so much,” she said. We each gave her a hug and a bit of parting wisdom. Clichés to us but distilled knowledge to her. “A watched pot never boils”, “Measure twice, cut once”. When it came to me, the helicopter was already too close. I suddenly realized I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t okay with losing her now, would never be okay with it. She couldn’t hear me, even though I screamed with all my might. Shadows hopped down from the helicopter and I scribbled down my last words into the book Priya had given Lara. I pressed it into her hands and she pulled it close to her chest. The soldiers pushed me aside and circled her, guiding her to the spinning blades. I saw them take Lara and lift her up into one of the passenger seats.

One of the soldiers in black pointed to another and then to us. They saw the book clutched to Lara’s chest and wrenched it from her hands, slinging it back at us. It landed amongst the scattered ruins of the birthday feast.

White hot bullets streaked out from the helicopter, swiping across us in a neat little line, then back again.

I felt the cold ground against my cheek as I watched the helicopter fly away into the encroaching darkness.