Aveline (7 page)

The path running along the inside of the
massive stone and brick structure was wide enough for two people to
walk shoulder to shoulder and smooth from wear.

She trailed her father and stepmother and
then took her place at her father’s side looking out over the world
outside the city.

It was the one time every year when she saw
this world, and she stared, mesmerized by how large it appeared to
be. The forest stretched in every direction. Her brother had told
her stories of the kinds of animals dwelling in the woods, of lakes
twice the size of the city, of wastelands where nothing grew in the
far south, and to the west, of the ocean he claimed was bluer than
the sky and extended across half the planet.

She had never set foot in any of it. If her
family had it their way, she never would. At seventeen, she was not
permitted to leave her rooms, unless it was for one of these
special occasions.

Matilda snatched her arm hard enough to
bruise, and Tiana blinked, snapping back from her imagination to
her immediate surroundings. Her father had moved to the edge of the
wall to offer his blessings to his son and the dozens of men in
scarlet and his command to fill the empty wagons with meat.

Her stepmother motioned discreetly but
frantically towards the ground at Tiana’s feet. Tiana glanced down
and saw the snow hugging her feet beginning to float upward, toward
the sky.

Ordering the snowflakes to lie flat again,
she shifted her dress in an effort to hide the unusual movement.
Matilda released her, and Tiana forced her attention from the vast
world she longed to explore to her current situation. When she let
her mind wander, or when she was upset, strange powers emerged. As
much as she wanted to drink in the sights before her, she dared not
lose focus in front of so many people, especially not when Matilda
was watching.

Tiana listened dutifully to her father give
the traditional Winter Hunt speech, eyes on her brother. The Hunt
was dangerous, and usually, only half the men who left the walls
ever returned. Arthur claimed the Ghouls did not exist, but she had
heard the slaves speak of seeing the creatures inhabiting the
plains, awakened from hibernation when the Old World was destroyed
five centuries before. Many cities exiled their deformed members
rather than burning them, which meant the forests were filled with
grotesquely disfigured men and women who behaved with the wildness
of animals. Finally, the hostile natives who had reclaimed their
lands when the Old World fell knew no boundaries and freely roamed
all the lands outside the cities. They claimed ownership over
everything and killed any city dweller they crossed.

As scared as she was for her brother’s life,
Tiana was unable to convince herself that life here was much better
than what lay beyond the city’s edge. She would rather be free and
face all the dangers of the world combined. Or better yet – flee
towards the Free Lands, where everyone was said to live in harmony,
no matter what caste or deformity had defined them in their
previous lives.

Her father’s deep voice quieted. The
soldiers below, led by Arthur, wheeled their horses and started
down the path leading towards the forest.

Tiana wrung her hands once more, worried
about her brother. Her gaze slid to the man riding at her brother’s
right, his closest friend, a man from a family lower in the social
strata scale but still respectable. He had been trained as a
guardian and raised with Arthur, who was his ward.

As with her twenty year old brother, the
young man, Warner, had filled out almost completely, turning from a
boy to a man within the span of a year. She watched him often
through the peepholes and secret hiding spots in the family’s
apartments when he visited Arthur. Warner had a large, strong build
and was handsome enough that the slaves giggled when they spoke of
him. When Warner was with her brother, she did not fear Arthur’s
return. Her brother always boasted of how his friend was the best
fighter in the Shield and the first to defend him, if he were in
trouble.

Those on top of the walls watched in silence
for a full ten minutes in the cold before her father shifted away.
Everyone else followed his lead. With regret, Tiana turned her back
to the outside world and obediently trailed her stepmother towards
the outer city and into the pyramid where she lived.

As was customary, a feast followed the
commencement of the Winter Hunt, though Tiana was never permitted
to enjoy any of it. The other wealthy women removed their veils to
eat, but she was forbidden from doing so and sat stiffly and
unmoving at her father’s left until he dismissed her. Her stomach
growled, and she ignored it, fascinated by the people around her
she rarely saw.

The leader of the Shield appeared to have
aged twenty years in the past nine months, when she had seen him
last. Matilda told her he had been very ill, and it showed on his
gaunt features.

Matilda’s father, Christian Cruise, the
wealthiest man in the city, was old and stooped and fed by two
slaves. His wife, however, was little older than Matilda, and the
two women shot each other frequent looks of resentment that left
Tiana amused.

The rest of the men and women privileged
enough to sit with the Hanover’s and the wealthiest man in the city
were themselves from the original families to settle the city and
were too busy trying to impress one another to be interesting to
Tiana.

The adults talked around her and seemed not
to notice her at all, to which she was accustomed. She paid no one
any attention, until she heard her name on the lips of one of the
men. Startled, she focused on him.

“I am afraid our sweet Tiana is of too
sickly a nature to consider marrying,” Matilda was responding
smoothly.

“It is a shame, is it not? We have long
wished to cement the relationship our families enjoy,” the man
replied, glancing from Matilda to Tiana’s father.

“As my wife said, Tiana is too frail,” her
father replied with firmness no one would question.

The man bowed his head.

Tiana studied him. Did he
mean for her to marry
him
? He was old and fat, and his teeth
were crooked. When he looked to the man on his other side, she
began to think he wanted her to marry his son, who was nowhere near
as handsome or strong as Warner. If she were forced to wed any man,
she hoped it would be the friend of her brother. Thinking of Warner
twisted her stomach into knots and sent her blood
racing.

No one said anything else about her the rest
of the dinner. Tiana retired to her room before anyone else,
accompanied by three slaves who left her alone at the entrance of
the family’s apartment.

She went to her room and lifted off the
veil, able to see clearly once more. She took off the coat and
hugged it in place of her brother then smoothed the fur lining and
replaced it in the wardrobe. She removed the ceremonial sash and
gown and placed them in the wardrobe in exactly the way Matilda had
shown her. Changing into one of her sleeping gowns, which she wore
most of the day, every day, Tiana approached the door and touched
the smooth wood with her fingertips. She felt energized after the
half hour she spent outdoors and ached to leave her room to
experience more.

Without Matilda’s overbearing presence, and
with the slaves occupied by the feast, the apartment was quiet. She
often stood before the door leading from her room to the rest of
the family’s quarters and debated what it would be like to be able
to open the door at will and go wherever she wanted. She was
forbidden from such action now by both her father and her
stepmother. While she understood their reasoning, she still let
herself imagine how incredible it would be to walk out, greet the
slaves and go to a feast where she could actually eat the amazing
food featured on the banquet tables.

Tiana smiled and began to hum then twirl
around her room, imagining herself at a ball, dancing with Warner.
In her imagination, her deformities did not exist, everyone in her
family loved her, and she was happy.

A pillow grazed her arm, floating from the
bed to dance with her. She snatched it out of the air with a giggle
and hugged it. How her deformities allowed her to use her mind to
move objects, to occasionally glimpse a person’s thoughts, and to
sense some events before they happened, she did not know. The
strange magic was difficult to control and impossible to predict,
except that it would always act up when she least wanted it to.

Tiana danced with the pillow and barely kept
from tripping over her brush as it floated towards her, too. In
fact, every piece of furniture and every item she possessed hovered
in the air.

Matilda’s sharp voice came from the
hallway.

“Down!” Tiana ordered the inanimate objects
urgently, panicking at the idea of Matilda witnessing her sorcery.
Everything dropped back to its place, and she snatched the brush
from the floor. She had barely managed to return it to the vanity
and tossed the pillow back on the bed before her door opened.

“You nearly exposed yourself!” Matilda
snapped and slammed the door. She marched to the drawer in Tiana’s
vanity where the white, powdery medicines were kept. Opening it,
she stared. “Have you touched them?” she demanded and whirled.

“No,” Tiana replied, eyes on the floor. “The
vanity floated a little.”

“Again?” Matilda snatched a bag from the
drawer.

“I apologize, Matilda.”

“You have no idea what it is like to live
with you, to fear you will cause us all to be burnt, because you
refuse to control this sinful sorcery!” Matilda shouted. “Do you
want me to be burned alive? To hear me scream alongside the rest of
the deformed freaks your father burns every Sunday?”

Tiana shook her head.

“Three incidents today, Tiana!” Matilda
withdrew a small knife from her silk purse. “It seems this is the
only cure to keep your ghoulish sorcery from happening. I did not
insist yesterday, because I did not wish you to be distraught for
today’s event. It was my misguided judgment, and for this, you
nearly exposed us all. I should have known better than to trust
you.”

Tiana accepted the knife and sat on the
bed.

“Three. Do it now.” Matilda planted her
hands on her hips and waited.

Tiana drew a deep breath and pressed the
edge of the knife against her forearm. There was no longer a spot
devoid of scars on either forearm, so she randomly chose a few
inches of skin to punish. The sharp sting was accompanied by a line
of red blood.

“Deeper,” Matilda ordered.

Gritting her teeth, Tiana pressed harder on
the second cut.

“Do you want to remain disfigured? How do
you expect to bleed out the sorcery if you do not cut deep enough?”
Matilda leaned forward and snatched Tiana’s wrist with one hand and
the knife with the other. She slashed Tiana’s arm, harder and
deeper than usual.

Tiana gasped, and tears sprang into her
eyes.

“I will cure you, Tiana, to stay in favor
with your father, even if I must first bleed every last ounce of
blood from your body. The clairvoyant who told me when I was six
that I would marry your father swore this would work, but you are
too weak to do it. Have you no love for your family? Do you want us
to be burnt at the stake?”

“No, Matilda,” Tiana whispered, distraught
by the idea. She alternately admired and hated her strange ability.
At the moment, she felt the full shame of being deformed and
possessed by sorcery that alarmed even her brother.

“Then behave like the daughter of your
father!” Matilda shoved the knife and powdery medication into her
purse. She left, slamming and locking the door behind her.

Woozy from pain and the strain of venturing
outside her room, Tiana stood. She went to the private bathroom off
her bedroom and squeezed blood out of her wounds into the sink, as
Matilda had shown her many times. The more blood she lost, the less
magic was inside her. Or so the clairvoyant who had guided
Matilda’s life claimed. Tiana squeezed until no more blood bubbled
then washed her forearm before binding the wound with trembling
fingers.

Miserable, Tiana returned to her bed and
curled up in a ball.

The outside world could never be as cruel as
this one. At least, away from the city, she would be free to run
from someone like Matilda instead of cowering, and no one would
accuse her of sorcery when she lost control over her power to lift
inanimate objects. Outside the city, she would not be confined for
all but four days a year, and she could visit her brother whenever
she wished.

Most of all, she would not feel the way she
did now: ashamed of existing and burdening everyone around her.

But it was not the pain of her wounds or
self-pity sending hot tears down Tiana’s cheeks. It was the
unspoken words in Matilda’s mind that Tiana had read as Matilda cut
her.

I hate this cripple.

Tiana wished she did not possess the ability
to read minds at all, however erratic and inconsistent the skill
was. She did not want to know how much Matilda despised her. She
wanted to be able to believe that maybe, what Matilda did was to
try to help her was out of some shred of human decency, however
small that piece of Matilda was. Why should it matter that Matilda
truly hated her and acted, not out of sympathy, but out of
self-preservation?

Because I want her to love me.

The foolish, heartfelt desire embarrassed
Tiana as much as her disfigured body.

Tiana cried harder than usual. Born into
privilege, enslaved by her deformity, she wished her father had let
her die beside her mother, seventeen years ago.

A large celebration was in full swing in the
massive pyramid at the south side of the city, attended by swarms
of men and women wearing jewels and silks. Aveline stepped out of
the tunnel leading into the most privileged place in Lost Vegas.
She had seen the pyramid from afar without fully comprehending how
large it truly was. Her mouth fell open, and she stared upwards,
towards the top of the structure, which came to a point some two
hundred feet above.