1.5

As he got to collecting twigs, building a fire, and creating a spit atop it, I beat the lizard against the jagged end of a rock. Its limbs convulsed with each pounding of the head but soon grew still and limp in my hold. Drawing out a pocket knife, I skin the animal shallowly, conscious of not chipping away its flesh in the process. The blade’s gleaming edge enters smooth and clean only to resurface red and wet and with the tangy scent of iron.

“You don’t have to.” Lin interrupts as I begin to slice the animal in half. He speaks with the slight intonation of guilt, a thin flimsy layer that lifts just briefly every time for me to notice his sunken temples, hollowed cheeks, and dark eyes flickering anxiously between the animal and me as if I would eat it any moment without him.

It was my kill, after all.

I tear out its guts and toss them aside for whichever stray dog would wander through these parts. “I know.” It had never been an option to eat alone. Slicing the lizard down the center into two equal portions, I hand one to him, grinning lopsidedly. “But I still do.”

Lin takes his piece gratefully then meticulously pierces it with his stick and lifts it to the fire, slowly turning it over with each hiss and spit.

We eat in silence; the taste of smoke and charred tough meat saturating my taste buds. Lizards had never been my favorite of animals. I glance sideways at Lin who was well into the last quarter of his piece, sucking the thin bones that toothpicks and tossing them into the dead fire.

I focus on my own, willing my mind to conjure thoughts of roasted chicken or a bowl of millet porridge filled past the lip, liquid quivering high within a taut skin, and as I bite into another tough piece of meat, I contemplate with a voluptuous, anxious dreaminess of how I might take the first spoonful without losing a drop.

 Once I overheard a servant say that the mind is a powerful thing and if you’re desperate enough, it can bend to your will.

But today it did not or maybe there were limits to our imagination because the lizard still tasted like a lizard and not chicken.

The hunger pangs had subsided to a comforting silence by the time I sucked the last bone and tossed it into the heap of ashes. Beside me Lin had rolled onto his belly, cheek resting on the earth, his gaze fixed but unseeing on me.

The silence is comfortable. I pluck a blade of grass and roll it between my thumb and index finger whilst gazing out into the town before us. Spring had passed into summer not long ago, and summer’s dying light had begun to mesh into autumn.

There are mists now in the morning and sometimes storms at night that batter the roofs of our quarters, dripping coldly through the wearing spaces. Winter would come soon with its beauty and malice, the green hellebore leaves drowned out in white, and the bare cypress trees tall and needle-pointed against the metal sky.

Lin stirs to an upright position with another soft groan. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing,” I hum, feeling the gentle palm of the wind against my back, “Everything.”

Daylight was beginning to edge just along the horizon, the marketplace was closing down, people slowly returning to their homes while those that work at night begin to slink through the alleys and bars.

“Your birthday’s in a week,” Lin mutters to fill the void with a sliver of glee.

“Is it?” I reply dismissively, the thought sparking a murmur of bile up my throat.

His blurred face nods vigorously along my periphery. “I have a gift for you.”

The corner of my mouth twitches upwards, “Let me guess—“

“You will not know it.”

“— food?”

Lin shakes his head. His smooth bare scalp gives his facial structure a wide mandibular look, like a grasshopper.

I flick the blade of grass away and begin to rise, “Then I don’t want it.” He scrambles to rise and catch up with my downhill stride.

“You don’t even know what it is!” He yells after me.

I shrug nonchalantly, “I don’t need to. If it’s not food, it’s not a worthy gift.”

Though I cannot see him, I know his chin juts up an inch in prideful defiance, the swallowing darkness of his eyes deepening to depths of accepted competition. Before he takes the next turn and disappears in the swirl of moving bodies to find his shelter for the night, I hear his parting words.

 “We’ll see about that, Ariadne.”

He takes the next turn and disappears in the swirl of moving bodies to find his shelter for the night.

The town bell tolls heavily indicating that seven had arrived.

Darkness falls and lamp lights glow a murky yellow in the night. Listlessly, I wander the streets and alleys in search of nothing, breathing in the biting cold that feels like tiny knives scraping my throat. But the pain is a welcome reprieve to take my mind off the edging date.

My eighteenth birthday.

A day scarcely celebrated by the females of those below the upper class, and perhaps even the daughters born of wealth lament their eighteenth birthday for it was the day when their lives would no longer be theirs.

Those from poor families are either married off for dowry, sold into slavery to pay off debts or given to the brothels and bars.

Those from the rich are paraded before suitors like cattle; prodded and touched, the finer the female the finer the heirs.

Diligent, sad women who are bent on a lifelong course of quiet servitude, forever in fear of showing, saying or doing the wrong thing.

A muscle in my jaw ticks in discontentment just as the darkness shifts by my side.

“Why the long face?” An arm slides over the breadth of my shoulders with familiar ease, drawing me closer to his side.

The heat of Adiran’s skin and staunch smell of coal is welcoming like another coat to ward off autumn’s cold. I crane my neck to get a better look at my brother; he is taller than I am, every sinew taut from labor and hidden beneath a thin sooty shirt.

Feeling my scrutiny, Adiran shifts his eyes to mine. Brown and warm as summer earth, hardened along the edges with fine lines of stress despite his age only being twenty two. He cocks a dark brow, “What is it?”

“Everything.” Shifting my attention back to the path, I kick a stone and watch it skitter off to the side. “How was work?”

“Fun.” He says dryly, then gives my shoulder a squeeze. “How was your day?”

“Fun.” I mimic.

“What did you do?” A pause, “Other than get beaten.”

Heat flares through me, rising up my neck and spreading beneath my cheeks. The ache of Elias’ palm returns stinging. “In my defense,” I start, desperately searching for a lie but coming up with none.

Adiran leans into me heavily, his face pressing into my hair. “In your defense?” He mocks earning a scowl from my downturned face. “What did you do?”

Shoving my hands deep into my pockets, I kick another stone. “I stole.”

The warmth of Adiran’s eyes cools ever so slowly, “Ari--”

“It was only bread.” I retort, shoving my hands deep into my pockets in search of something to hold. “Besides,” nocking an eyebrow, I turn to him, “it’s not like they ever notice.”

Adiran’s dark gaze lingers on my cheek pointedly.

I flush, “Okay. But it was just this time--”

“You need to stop--”

“And I will,” the urge to shrug off his hand from my shoulder grows steadily, “when I start earning enough to buy us all hot meals.”

He does not reply, evidently irritated by my actions but far too worn out to speak on it.

I opt to soothe the sharpened atmosphere. “Arya should have made dinner by now.” If dinner could be classified as a handful of beans boiled in clear water and a slice of bread split in two, never three.

Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday were the nights I skipped meals. Dinner would never be enough if all three of us sat to eat, it scarcely fed Arya and Adiran. Arya skipped dinner on Tuesday and Saturday while Adiran did not. He worked at the mines which demanded more energy than either of us, and his wages were higher.

Adiran grunts noncommittally and a silence ensues thinly as we cross a small bridge into the servants' part of the town where wooden shacks with caving roofs sat hunched on the mud.

The next question lingers beneath my skin. I had been asking him of it since I turned fourteen and watched him leave for the mines. The answer had always been the same, yet still I dared to ask with each passing day, month, year.

And now that my eighteenth birthday was approaching, the desperation was beginning to clog like a hot bone in my throat. I try to work the words around it while keeping my eyes fixated on the ground. 

“Did you ask your employer?”

I wish I could look at Adiran; sift his expression for the lie and truth as I had in the past, but time had drawn a line through the sand between us. And I found it easier to not look at him when he replied. It was easier, I found, to hide your shattering self from the naked eye.

“He didn’t come into work today.” The lie leaves his lips smooth as a polished knife, drawn to my chest like metal to magnet. “I’ll try next time.”

Next time.

He’s sick… he’s out of town… next time… next time… next time…

Eighteen was days away. There would be no next time.

Which female had ever worked in the mines to begin with?