The Seekers: The Children of Darkness (Dystopian Sci-Fi - Book 1) (24 page)

Nathaniel forced his way through and approached the desk. “Will
you let us share meals?”

The arch vicar shook his head and stood to leave.

A deacon grabbed Orah by the arms, but she twisted away. “One
meal, Holiness. One meal a week.”

The arch vicar looked at Orah, and then Nathaniel. Finally
he settled his gaze on the floor between them. “No. This session is ended.”

The deacons had secured her now and were dragging her toward
the exit. As the shadow of separation hovered over her, she became lightheaded,
overcome by despair. Was this how Thomas had felt at the end of his teaching?
As she neared the doorway, she stretched out an arm to touch Nathaniel one last
time.

“Wait.” The arch vicar addressed the lead deacon. “Place the
boy in the same cell as his last stay.”

Orah held her breath.

“And the girl, lock her in the next cell, the one recently
vacated by our late guest Samuel.”

A gift. The peephole as dispensation. Blessed be the light.

Nathaniel slowed his heartbeat to allow himself to sleep.
The weeks since leaving the wilderness had sapped his strength like a long
illness. He and Orah both needed time to heal, to prove they were still alive.
At first they talked incessantly, mulling over their fate until nothing was
left to say. Their world had become simple—no goals, no plans, no future. Now
they spoke whenever a thought occurred.

Orah had insisted on shifting their beds to the shared wall
so they could sense each other even as they slept. He listened for her
breathing, wondering if she was awake, but before he could gauge the rhythm,
she spoke.

“Nathaniel?”

“Yes, Orah.”

“I’ve been thinking about my father lately. I can picture
his hands at the loom, delicate hands with slender fingers, not like a man’s.”

“Like yours.” Nathaniel imagined she smiled.

“Like mine. I only need to glance down to recall them.”

Nathaniel stared at dust patterns on the wall.

“Nathaniel?”

“Yes.”

“I’m struggling to remember his face. I see him sometimes,
telling me stories at bedtime, but I can’t recall him at will. I wish I had a
viewing area with a topic called memories. ‘Help,’ I’d say. ‘Show me pictures
of my father,’ and he’d appear on the screen.”

“Those pictures have lasted a thousand years.”

“My father’s been gone just ten, yet I’m worried I’ll forget
him entirely.”

Nathaniel traced the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes. “In
here, I may forget my father as well.”

He tried to envision his father. Six months had passed since
he’d last seen home. He shook his head to jog his memory, to summon his father’s
face, but only Orah’s appeared.

“Move back,” he said, “away from the peephole.”

“Why?”

“I want to look at you.”

He heard her shuffling away from the wall. “I’m ready.”

He peered into the hole and caught her grooming herself,
licking her hands to rub dust from her face, dragging fingers through tangled
hair. She wore the same expression as when he kissed her at festival—eyes
sparkling in the candlelight, a blush to her cheeks. What would he do if the
vicars took her away?

He banished the thought from his mind. “Orah?”

“Yes.”

“Would you do it again?”

“I think so.” She laughed. It sounded like waterfalls. “Ask
me in twenty years.”

“What if I didn’t race off to save you from the teaching?
You’d be wiser in the light but would recover in time, as the elders say, and
we’d both still be at home.”

“Are you close to the hole, Nathaniel?”

”Uh-huh.”

She slapped the flat of her hand against the wall hard
enough for dust to fly. “Don’t go having regrets. I loved that you came for me,
and would never give up what we learned. Think of it, Nathaniel—a million suns.”

Nathaniel pulled his knees to his chest and rested his chin
on them. “I’m glad I went too.”

No response from the next cell. No movement outside. Nothing
but a candle flaring occasionally with a soft buzz. He checked on her once
more. She was leaning on the edge of the table, staring at nothing.

He knew the thought would anger her but felt compelled to
say it. “I should never have let you come with me that morning at the NOT tree.
Then I’d be alone in this cell, and you’d be safe in Little Pond.”

He peered through the hole. She was already striding toward
him. For a moment, he felt grateful for the wall in between.

“Don’t you ever think like that! How awful to have you
missing, and I not knowing where you were. Better to be near, connected by this
cursed peephole. Besides, how would you have found your way without me? You’d
still be searching for mountains in Adamsville.”

He nodded though she couldn’t see. He was beginning to
understand. “Remember what you said about having no illusions and needing to
make choices. We’ve made lots of choices, but we believed in them all. Does
that mean we should have no regrets?”

“I think so, like the old prisoner who lived in this cell.
He made choices based on what he believed. Did he have regrets at the end?”

“No, but to the end, he had hope. Maybe when we’re old we’ll
find a way to tell our story like he did.” The corners of his mouth struggled
upward, and he forced a glance to the unseen heavens. “Or our friend in
Bradford might mount an expedition to rescue us.” He shook his head. “There
goes Nathaniel having illusions again.”

“I don’t know, but one thing’s no illusion: being together.”

He imagined what she’d do next if not for the wall. He
leaned closer as if to savor the warmth of her touch.

“Orah?”

“Yes.”

“If none of this had happened, or if by some miracle they
let us go home to resume our lives, what would you wish for most?”

“Do you think it’s a good idea to dwell on impossible
dreams?”

He considered a moment. “Dreams may be all we have left.”

“Then here is my list. I wish to win a race at festival as
an adult, to have you win one too, so I can place a wreath on your head and
embarrass you in front of the whole village, to weave enough cloth one year to
let my mother get some rest, to go with you to explore the mountain pass and
discover the ocean....”

Her voice trailed off, and he assumed his turn had come.

“My list is short. If none of this had happened—no
teachings, no vicars, no seekers, no keep—I’d be content to spend the rest of
my life with you.”

When she failed to answer, he peeked through the hole in the
wall.

She sat sideways on the chair, one
arm draped over the back. The dim light of a candle flickered off her moist
cheeks.

***

Three weeks had passed since the arch vicar had assigned
Thomas to the kitchen. As another tedious day neared its end, he hobbled down
the hall to the storeroom to fetch a sack of flour. He walked with an uneven
gait, favoring his left side, and his head tilted left as well. His eyes
flitted everywhere, aimless and unfocused.

Which allowed him to study his surroundings without detection—a
perfect ruse. Only his friends would have seen through it.

Orah would be proud. He’d become a student of the dining
routine, observing every detail, gathering information.

The kitchen provided meals for several hundred people and
bustled with activity. Work began before sunrise when the baker arrived to fire
up the ovens. Preparations for dinner started immediately after lunch, and
setup for the next morning’s breakfast followed the evening meal. Everyone
raced about trying to finish as soon as possible and save a few minutes for
their families. This made the hour after dinner the most frenzied time of day,
ideal for avoiding notice.

He’d won the trust of Charles, the head cook, a round,
hairless man with a thick neck and three chins, who liked to order people about
using the familiar form of their name followed by the word
boy
—Willie-boy
or Johnnie-boy. In turn, the others referred to the cook as Charlie-boy, but
only behind his back.

Thomas played the simpleton so well the cook took to calling
him poor-boy.

“Poor-boy, fetch me a sack of beets. Poor-boy, a crate of
salted pork.”

Thomas bowed, yes-Holinessed and shuffled off. He got away
with asking foolish questions because everyone thought him feeble-minded, but
he always managed to slip in one question for which he needed to know the
answer.

“Holiness, why is the pork salted? Why are the beets stored
in sacks and not crates? Why are the walnuts in cans? How does the food get to
the vicars?”

He learned they served the clergymen first, and then the
deacons. Next came the kitchen staff. Leftovers went to the guards below and,
last of all, to the prisoners.

“How does the food get below?”

They sent the food from the kitchen using a moveable frame,
hoisted up or down with a system of pulleys. The largest of these lay behind
the brick ovens in a place left vacant except during mealtimes. It delivered
food upward to Temple officials and down to prison guards. A second smaller one
was set into the back wall of the storeroom. No one would tell him where that
one went.

Everyone knew the arch vicar had sent him, and they watched
him closely. When not working, they locked him away in a small room—but people
relaxed around the simpleminded. Increasingly, gaps in his oversight showed.

After dinner, cooks, scullions and others of Charlie-boy’s
underlings hustled through the steaming air, rattling pans in soapy water,
dragging crates of smoked meat and peeling potatoes for the next morning’s
meal. In the dimly lit alcove before the ovens, a washerwoman swished about on
the stone floor with a mop.

The others considered the storeroom his domain, the one
place he was allowed to enter unsupervised. With so many sacks and kegs, no one
bothered to track how long he stayed inside.

He wound through the stacks of
supplies and located the opening in the back wall, about half the height of a
man but wider. On closer inspection, he spotted the entrance to a shaft
downward. The frame lay in place, shelves empty, its work done for the day, but
he dared not disrupt it for long. He fingered the thick rope—rough hemp and
tightly woven. Good for a firm grip.

He inhaled through his nose and blew out a long stream of
air.
Well, Thomas, you always thought your friends were braver than you.
Time to be brave as well.

He raised the shelf and slipped underneath. Once in the
shaft, he clutched the rope between the insteps of his boots, pulled the shelf
back into place, and lowered himself down.

The corridor at the bottom had barely enough light to see.
The stale air coated his tongue with dust, and the walls were etched with
decay. Heavy wooden doors lined the far side, each locked with a metal bolt.

His heart sank.

He spent his days in a bright room surrounded by people,
while his friends stayed caged in these cells.

He took two steps to the nearest door, but stopped. A peek
through a slat, a slip of a bolt and they’d be free, but what then? Too many
unanswered questions remained, too many obstacles to freedom. Even Orah would
struggle to stitch together such a plan.

He stared at the door and shook his head. No way to help
them. If caught, he’d suffer a worse punishment than theirs, a useless
sacrifice. He’d discovered a trifle so far, not a plan. He’d need many more
trifles to make Orah proud.

He held his breath and listened. Were those the voices of
his friends? Too muffled to be sure.

Afraid to stay any longer, he vaulted back into the shaft
and shimmied up the rope.

***

A month had passed since Orah last saw Nathaniel with no
wall in between. Now, as four deacons blocked her view and kept them apart, she
peered past them to get a clearer look. He seemed thinner and more pale.

She suspected she looked no better.

The deacons led them through a maze of dimly lit corridors
until she lost all sense of direction. Finally, they arrived at an arched
doorway forming the end of a hall.

She suppressed a gasp. On the wall
beside it sat a box with sixteen buttons in the shape of stars. The lead deacon
knocked. After a moment, the door opened and the lone figure of the arch vicar
filled its frame. He waved the deacons off and bid Orah and Nathaniel enter.

The arch vicar ushered them into a painfully familiar room.
A soft glow rose around them, with no visible source. The furnishings differed
from anything she’d seen in Temple City, with metal tables and straight-backed
chairs. Every few paces, the plain white walls were broken by the rectangular
windows she’d come to know as screens.

She did her best to disguise her reaction. “What place is
this? Temple magic?”

“Well played, Orah,” the arch vicar said, “but you fool no
one. I know you’ve been to the keep.”

She gritted her teeth as if pressing harder would prevent
her from replying.

The old man responded with a look of his own, a glare of
condemnation he’d used so often it had grown into his flesh and bones. “No need
to answer, but tell me this: what made you so enamored of the keep? What about
these people who valued progress over human souls impressed you so? What did
you discover there that inspired you to throw your lives away?”

Orah glanced at Nathaniel; he licked his cracked lips and
nodded.
Stay with what he knows.

“You read our messages,” she said. “They say what we found.”

The arch vicar shuffled behind a desk. Arranged in a row
upon its surface lay the four bulletins, and beside them, her log.

“Yes, of course, the truth about everything. I forgot. You
are the seekers of truth.”

He came back around and stood before her, so near her cheeks
burned with the heat of his breath.

She rocked on her toes and raised her chin, refusing to be
intimidated. “We sought the truth and wrote about what we found.”

The arch vicar softened. This close, she perceived a sadness
in his eyes.

“My child, when you’ve lived longer—that is, if we’d allowed
you to grow old in the outside world—you’d understand there’s no such thing as
absolute truth. I’m sure you learned in the keep how much harm was done in the
name of good.”

“The same could be said of the Temple.”

“I suppose. Which only proves that truth is elusive. We all
act based on what we believe. I understand your little crusade, but I believe you
are wrong. I can assure you of one thing: in the age of the keepmasters, you
would not have been treated this well.”

He returned to the desk and seated himself. Philosophical
discussion had ended. Back to Temple business.

“Tell me how to get to the keep.”

She bit her lower lip and stayed silent, but winced when the
arch vicar picked up her log and flipped through its pages. “You write well,
with such passion. So intent to right a wrong, to improve the lives of your
people. But what of your fear—to be unworthy of another’s love? Now you must
make a choice. I can never allow you to leave, but if you assist me, I’ll let
you share the noontime meal every day.”