[7]
Outside, the air is still coated with the stale mist of yesterday. We’ve managed to miss most of the crowds by ducking out the poor man’s entrance, but at least two hundred people clamor toward us through the fog.
After the people follow the cameras, hovering in the air, their large lens-faces trained squarely on Jasper and me. ( I love the camera’s they’ll keep showing up.)
Muffled by the moisture, girls, raggedy and rich alike, scream, “Hale dynasty! Hale dynasty! Hail to the Hales!”
I look straight ahead, but from the corner of my eye I can see Jasper smiling, stopping occasionally to shake hands. Startlingly enough, people seem to ignore his sister, the one who actually won. Maybe it’s because she’s distant from them, unreadable.
How does he have the energy, the will? I’m trying my best not to just . . . stop. The only the way to keep up my energy is to distance myself from the ever growing mob, but he seems to thrive on the crowd. He will have no problem winning sponsors.
Yet, I’m not totally alone.
Once, I think I hear a voice suspiciously like Greasy Ol Sae’s yell, “Now you have a reason to break someone’s arm.”
A chorus starts from somewhere. “Swan! Swan!” Jacob, Leah, even Emily on Jacob’s shoulders, all pump their fists. I swallow my disappointment at the fact that I don’t see Charlie or Ben anywhere.
Finally, we push out to a door in the marble wall. I remember when I was little, thinking it was some kind of tomb. As I got older, I was sure it was just a glamorized supply closet. In truth, it leads to a small tunnel. I expect it to be like the sewers, but it’s clean, made of marble. We walk for a minute and then come across a square platform hanging over a metal track.
A soft whirring sound comes from the dot of light in the distance, where the tunnel ends. As we are encouraged up the stairs by Tanya, the sound gets louder. By the time we are all standing on the platform, a metal sphere, large enough to fit four people, has arrived. I cock my head, looking at it. I don’t see any bolts or lines where the steel is joined together.
Tanya smirks at our questioning looks. “Vampire technology. We usually don’t let you humans see the real goods. Your brains wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. ” She looks less stunning up close than from far away. I can almost see a wrinkle on her forehead. The transformation is supposed to eliminate all but the most severe signs of aging. She must have been turned when she was very old. (I like the idea of Tanya being simultaneously a cougar trying to stay young for eternity.)
“Tanya, I believe this is where we part ways,” Edward says.
She moves to him, pouting, and tugs on the shiny sleeve of his black suit. It’s an odd contrast; her made up face and the childishness of the motion. “Darling, I could always join you in the Zeppelin. Just like old times.”
He removes her hands and kisses her lightly on the cheek, so quick I almost don’t see it. “I think you have other Districts to see to.”
“I only have District 12 left. Everyone knows their story anyways; two sad, emaciated humans going off to die. Boo hoo.” (Hello! Hunger Games reference.) She looks up at Edward for approval.
I have to force myself not to spit in Tanya’s crimson eyes. We are people. She can’t just joke about us dying. Except, I can’t stop her, so I guess she can.
“We all must make sacrifices,” Edward says coldly, his eyes flitting towards mine.
He knows about my thoughts. And he’s going to do what? Sacrifice me? Kill me? But his gaze doesn’t seem angry as they catch mine. So maybe he’s going to hurt me for my thoughts.
Her eyes narrow. “Well, ta-ta for now then,” Tanya says, before giving a jaunty little wave and disappearing.
With an economical gesture of the hand, Edward commands the three of us towards the sphere.
Edward and I get in on one side and Jasper and Rosalie on the other. Immediately after we enter, the carriage lurches into motion. As I’m thrown back from the lurch, I can’t help but meet Rosalie’s eyes across from me. I know that she’s powerful now, that she could destroy me with just a thought, but I don’t care. I scowl at her for all I’m worth.
“What?” she says, as if she actually has no clue why I’m staring at her. Although she glares right back despite her confusion. This isn’t surprising. Glaring was always Rosalie Hale’s default expression.
Maybe she’s forgotten. Maybe she doesn’t remember what she did to me, who I am. The process of being a vampire dulls human memories, all but the most important.
I’d think informing on your best friend’s mother would be an important memory, but it’s possible I’m wrong. It’s possible that Rosalie Hale doesn’t remember how she ruined my life.
I invited her to my mother’s birthday party, because she was my best friend. For all the beatings she gave me (and I beat her up a few times just as good), she wasn’t a bad friend. She terrorized anyone who teased me about my inability to shoot a bow, and when Garrett, an eleventh year I had a crush on, ended up going out with Kate, Rosalie told everyone that he had gotten a 2 on his last sparring quiz.
After she came to the party and heard my mother sing the song about flowers, she told someone. (A song loosly based on where have all the flowers gone. The idea of flowers and stories and songs will play a large role in this story.) Maybe her parents, maybe a teacher, maybe she wrote a letter to the President himself, I don’t know.
I know it was her, because she didn’t speak to me all day in training-school, and when I got to my house after staying late for afterschool, everything was wrong.
Everything I owned, not the expensive stuff, but the important things: photos, recipes, clothes, the jar we used to keep the moths we caught in summer, the preserves of jams, lay strewn across the yard. There caught on the branches of the little tree out in front dangled the dress my mother had worn only yesterday.
Our other things were hidden in the grass, toy trucks, chipped coffee-mugs, pictures, picture-books with the pages torn out fluttering lamely the clipped-wings of a dying bird.
“What are you doing here?” said someone behind me.
I whirled to see Rosalie. She looked as confused as I felt, but instead of staring at the wreckage outside of my house, she was staring at me. Like I was the anomaly.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she said, cold as if she was talking to a first year that had tried to get too friendly.
“Rose?” Her nickname sounded wrong the moment I said it. Even though everything was a mess she looked almost sterile standing there. Sterile and formal.
“You should be at your home,” she mumbled.
Rosalie never mumbled. Her whole strategy was beauty and charisma.
The world was upside down.
“This is my home.” I said, my voice rising in confusion and anger.
“Not anymore,” she said bitterly.
Coldness seeped into me. “What?”
She just stood there, silent and beautiful. Like it was just part of her strategy—to seem invulnerable.
“Why is all my stuff on the lawn?” I repeated, louder.
A light breeze picked up, stealing between the strands of her shiny, straight, blond hair, animating it.
“Rose! Seriously, this is a shitty joke, even for you.”
She tried to step away from me, but I couldn’t just let her go. She knew something about why everything was so wrong, and she wasn’t telling me. She was supposed to be my friend.
Using my back foot, I propelled myself forward. She hit the ground with a thud and I followed soon after, but she shouldn’t have gone down so easy.
She let me push her back into the dirt, not moving to break my hold. “If this your house, why isn’t your father stopping us?”
“Rose, what’s your pro—”
Finally she turned to look at me again, but her gaze wasn’t just cold, it was glacial. “Why isn’t your mother here?”
“I don’t know!” I yelled. I was just about thrust my fist into the side of her jaw with all my might, because I didn’t know what else to do, when I heard the thump of heavy boots.
Peacekeeper boots. I turned around, expecting my father, my strong, stoic father. He wouldn’t tolerate people doing things like this to his family, his house.
But when I turned, it wasn’t just father’s face that greeted me, just an anonymous Peacekeeper. And there, behind him, was my brother. ((There is more to this story. Did Rosalie really betray them? Read on to find out.))
Ben didn’t even look worried. He always looked awkward and frightened before my mom died, but that day his back was straight and his gaze flinty and strong. Holding his hand, looking so lost, like a child, like an animal, was my father, the strongest man I ever knew— broken.
“Charles, Benjamin, and Isabella Swan, you are hereby relocated to grey-level,” said the Peacekeeper.
“What?” I asked, choked.
Rosalie looked away. I don’t know if she was ashamed or just couldn’t see my face as I looked at my brother.
In his hand, my brother held up the letter.
Embossed on it was a blood red-seal and the words, in flowing red, script, “The Empire appreciates your contribution.”
Rosalie was the reason my mother was dead.
Abruptly, the pod is filled with the pink light of breaking dawn. The tunnel has ended. I hadn’t noticed in the darkness, but the hull of the pod is semi-transparent, a cross between steel and glass.
I press my cheeks to the cold wall-window and look at outside. It’s a blur, but I’m able to see things that are far enough away, like the craggy shoreline and the tall tree surrounded by gravestones, crowding like children around a teacher eager to hear a story. The fog is gone now, migrated somewhere else; soon I will have too.
The countryside morphs from the half-wild ruins of suburbia to long stretches of deserted fields. Then even those are swallowed up by rag-tag bands of trees. ( I have a minor obsession with trees ever since reading the line the trees rioted on the Earth in Heart of Darkness by Joeseph Conrad.)
All the Morphing Game Prospectives go the capitol, Volterra, for the opening ceremony, but I don’t know how far away it is. Rumor has that it’s located on the East Coast, in the North near a waterfall so tall and fierce that if you tried to swim underneath it, you’d drown. The oceans swallowed up most of the eastern seaboard, so Volterra is now a coastal town too. (Aka niagra falls.)
Gradually, so gradually that at first it’s almost imperceptible, the pod begins to slow, until it stops right on the edge of a field of rust-colored stalks of wheat. ( A nod to the later persephone reference.) But as I exit the pod, I don’t notice the way the trees here are so much brighter than the dying ones near the lake, or how bitingly fresh the air is.
All I can focus on is the thing resting on the grain.
It looks a lot like the pod, but much, much larger, and warped slightly, like the back a spoon, taking in light, color and distorting it.
If Ben were here his jaw would drop. He loved big, moving things when he was little.
“I’ve heard it said that traveling in it is like riding in the clouds,” Edward breathes against my ear.
I jump a little, bumping into his chest, and I can swear he rumbles with inaudible mirth before I step away from him.
“Others say it’s like dissolving into the ether. Some consider it a spiritual experience.”
I root my feet into the ground. If I turn around I’ll know exactly how close he is, and I can’t know that. Just the possibility that he is as close as he is, is doing frightening things to my stomach.
I briefly contemplate running off into the field. But there’s no cover to hide in, and even if was he would have no problem catching me. My face would be reflected in the surface of the zeppelin—it catches every scrap of light.
“And what do you think?” I ask I can almost feel him, even though he’s not touching me. Just a few more millimeters and I will be able feel his muscles explicitly.
He waits so long to speak that finally I pivot, expecting to see him right behind me. Instead he’s leaning indolently against the bottom of the balloon, gazing at his reflection with mocking curiosity. “I think that four black horses and a chariot would be more appropriate.” (Obviously he sees himself as Hades stealing away Persephone to hell. I have a penchent for this myth and yes it’s overused as hell in the romance genre, but who cares. here hell def has a super dark connotation, perhaps relating directly to death.)
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
He’s not making any sense, and he has to know that he’s not. He’s playing with his food. I can’t help but turn towards the grain-edged horizon and step toward it. But before I can take another step, he is standing right in front of me.
“Sorry, Persephone,” he says soft as the wind brushing against the top of the stalks. “No running away.
I move to the side, but he grabs my wrist, not hard, but tightly enough I know I won’t be able to get out. The tips of his fingernails graze the inside of my wrists right over the branching tributaries of my veins.
My heart beats so loudly I can hear it.
Immediately, he drops my hand and stills, like he’s been flushed out of hiding. Yet I am the one being hunted.
Then as if he hadn’t just started, he gestures upward to the sky. “Unfortunately, black horses or not, we have places to be, and the Cloud Gate (The cloud gate is actually a cross between the Hindenberg, the Bean and a Japanese Lantern– see visual appendix for more.) waits for no man or beast.”
It’s almost like he’s speaking another language, a beautiful one, but one I don’t understand all the same.
I tip my head back, my hair falling slightly out of the twist, tickling the back of my neck, as I see my own face, contorted and enlarged in the mirror-balloon. “Cloud Gate?”
He smiles, eyes slightly hooded. “It’s the name of the zeppelin. Do try to keep up, Isa-”
“My name’s not Persephone or Isabella. It’s Bella.” It’s a long shot, but maybe if he sees me as a person and not just as a name from a slip of paper, he’ll decide not to kill me for my thoughts.
“Come, Isabella,” is all he says in reply.
So much for my strategy.
Despite the command he doesn’t move, his hand remains immobile saluting the giant zeppelin.
Then I see why.
In response to his motion, unfolding from the belly of the balloon and down to the ground is a long arm of stairs. It contorts and unfurls, each tread popping out like a finger out of a fist.
Before it is even down to the ground, Edward jumps onto it, and once the jump is manageable, I follow. The ladder shakes slightly as we walk up it, and I realize that it’s lifting up off of the ground.
Finally, the name makes sense because of the movement and reflection the upper edge of it seems to be made of sky and the lower half earth. It really is a gate to the clouds.
Edward closes the hatch behind me, and I’m left looking at a long hallway. “Take off your shoes,” he commands, a blur as he slips out of his brown loaders
I bend down to try and try to untie my laces, but by fingers are trembling too much to pick open the knot. Is he going to kill me now?
I look up to Edward whose expression is unreadable as ever. He leans forward, and I flinch. Now. He’s going to do it now. Break my neck. It would be so easy.
But the blow never comes. Instead, he bends over, and in seconds my shoes are off. I shiver at the feeling of his cold hands through my threadbare socks.
“I did ask you to keep up, didn’t I?” is all he says for explanation before setting off at a brisk walk.
I have to jog to keep up as we make a few turns along the long corridor. As I run, I discover why he wanted me to take off my shoes. The floor bends. There’s no other way to describe it. It doesn’t bend much with each step, not enough to be alarming, but ever so slightly.
“Is this some kind of glass balloon?” I joke. I have to joke; the only other option is fainting from the fear that at any moment Edward is going to rip me apart for my treasonous thoughts.
But now in such a tight space, the truth of my situation becomes clear. I am trapped.
Edward makes a sound that must be a laugh, but it seems more like a cough. Humor never was my strong suit, but I seem to amuse him a little at least. Maybe he won’t rip me limb from limb.
“A glass balloon,” he says. “If Marcus heard you call his precious Cloud Gate a balloon.”
Before I can reply, he points to a door. “Look.”
I can’t help but stare at his hands pointing; they are large but his fingers are still tapered and long.
I look at him blankly. The door isn’t opening.
He could have killed me in the field, but maybe he wanted to wait until I had let down my guard. Didn’t want a scream to disturb the other Prospective.
But I can’t take it anymore, the waiting.
“Just get it over with.” I blurt out.
His eyes narrow, “Get what over with?”
He was going to make me say it out loud? Fine. “Just kill me.”
He chuckles that same low laughter that makes me prickle in a way I’ve never felt before.
He leans over slightly, so that we are eye to eye. “Why would I kill you, Isabella?”
It’s hard to think when he says my name like that. “B-because you heard my thoughts.”
“Did I?” He moves closer until his cold breath tickles the tip of my nose.
I square my jaw. I will not die afraid. “Tanya said that you could read thoughts.”
He smiles and I can see every tooth, even the fangs. “I can.”
“So?” I will not close my eyes. I will look my killer in the face, make him realize what he’s killing is alive, is a person.
“Silly girl, I’m not going to kill you.” He admonishes, and to my great surprise brings out a finger to touch my face. Stroking it. Something in me clenches. “Even if I could read your thoughts, I wouldn’t care whatever heretical thoughts you have.”
“Y-you don’t?” It is so unfair. My mom died for one little song. And Edward must have heard my every explicit hatred of vampires, and he’s going to do nothing. Why do I deserve this? I almost feel disappointed.
His hand is at the underside of my chin now, and goose bumps have emerged from my skin like buds from the dirt.
“Not an iota,” he says so fiercely, the words seem like they’ll combust.
His hand leaves my face. Involuntarily, I lean forward.
His eyes darken, but he raises a hand over his head and snaps his finger, behind him the door opens.
Watching his fingers press together like that, so fast and hard, makes me blush. “Is that your power too?” I ask, and it comes out oddly breathless.
Edward chuckles, raising an eyebrow. “No, the door is just the magic of vampire engineering and electronics.”
I move away from him cautiously, still not sure that he isn’t going to come from behind me and snap my neck.
“I’m not quite finished with you yet, Isabella.” All mirth is gone from his voice. (If she only knew how unfinished he was with her.)
I stop suddenly, all of the hairs on the back of my neck raising. “Yes?”
His expression turns sharp and serious “Dinner’s at eight. Do not be late; you and I have things to discuss. You may do whatever you please until then. There are clothes in the closet, and breakfast on the bed. The reaping should be on the vid-screen. I strongly encourage you to watch your competition.”
‘Thanks,” I say, the thought of food pushing away my fear of Edward. Will it be real food and not the blood flavor bars? Maybe it will be hot and steaming. Saliva floods my mouth at the thought, and I find myself scrambling through the doorway.
Once through, I turn around and give a slow clap, not sure exactly how this will close it, but the door swings shut in spite of my hesitation. This seems silly to me. If you can move at super-speed, with super strength, how are you too lazy to open a door?
The room in front of me isn’t grandiose like the Blood Bank, but looks rich in a different way. Every surface, except for the bed, desk, and a few chests of drawers, is made of a smooth malleable material; the same material making up the mirror-balloon, as I’ve dubbed it, and the floor. The ceiling appears to be slightly convex, as if it’s a canopy. On the right wall is a small screen, and as Tanya said, it’s playing re-runs of the Reapings. I’ll need to watch that soon to understand my competition.
But first I am drawn to the plate of food lying on a tray on my bed. There’s a tall glass of some pink liquid I’ve never seen before, as well as plate of toast and waffles. The toast is coated with a thin white and yellow film of eggs. Circling the perimeter of the plate are lines of strawberry’s cut into quarters. The artfulness of the display lasts approximately two seconds before it is in my mouth.
As I scarf down the food, I watch the Reapings. What I see causes me to slow my pace of consumption, and eventually push the plate aside all together. For all the luxury, I had almost forgotten the price I had paid, what was to come. The recaps of the Reapings remind me.
The first Reaping looks almost festive. District 1, the richest of all the districts, produces luxury goods. The women are wearing dresses that look more like cupcakes and columns than clothing, and then men are in suits.
Unsurprisingly, the Prospectives are two volunteers.
Aston Martin and Volvina Doubleyuu (Does nobody get this? 😦 Aston Martin is and Volvina are references to the Cullen’s cars. I thought it was funny.) look every inch the perfect perspectives from their blank faces, beady eyes to their midnight skin and matching silver dreadlocks.
But the tone of the other Reapings is very different.
For one, in not one other district does anyone volunteer.
Except for in District 10.
Unlike District 1, the Reaping Room of District 10 is not theatrical, but over-illuminated by fluorescent lights, with only a makeshift stage below which the crowd stands.
I pause the video and peer closer to check something.
Oddly enough, there doesn’t appear to be families or any other smaller groups, just row upon row of shaved head and empty eyes, like soldiers. Even odder, the moment the liaison gets on stage, the same vampire from District 1 who looks much less at home in the moldy basement than on the mahogany stage, the crowd explodes into sound.
It’s hard to tell the boy apart from the girl, let alone the girls apart from each other. But eventually two scramble out of the crowd and onto the stage. But unlike the volunteers of District 1, they don’t seem in any way physically fit or possessing any skills that could lead them to victory.
This happens every year; the District 10’s are always the most eager to participate and they are usually the first to die. I’ve never understood, and even high definition doesn’t clarify this mystery. (A mystery which will be clarified.)
Only a few other contestants stick out to me. From District 3, in what looks to have been a school auditorium, a small girl with dark hair and darker eyes who seems to be on the stage before they’ve even called her name, even though when I rewind I see she was in the twenties pen, the one farthest away from the stage. (Hello, Alice!)
A sly, slender girl with a mane of bright curly red hair from District 7, takes her place in the out-door amphitheater bordered by tall winter-trees. (Hello, Victoria!)
Most hauntingly, is a girl from District 6, who were it not for the pale skin and bronze-curls, looks exactly like Emily, with her big brown eyes. She’s a child. Unlike Emily, though, she doesn’t cry as she walks up to the platform, and also unlike Emily, when she stands on stage there is no desperate voice volunteering for her. (Hello, Renesmee!)
The racketeers would have put her odds as being abysmal in any other year, but this year she’s not the only child.
From District 3 is a small boy with black hair and almond eyes who doesn’t ever meet the camera head on (Hello, Eric!), and from District 8, a girl obviously too tall for her (Hello, Angela!) body, lanky with early adolescence. Most surprisingly, a pair of twelve-year-old twins is called from District 11. (Hello Alec and Jane!)
This shouldn’t be my competition. There should be large eighteen-year olds, the kind who know how to use axes and blowguns. Looking at the pictures of the small, frightened children that come on stage, I can’t help but feel that this is going to be impossible. How can I watch these children die? How can I kill them?
After I finish watching the Reapings, I draw the covers over my head, much like I had earlier yesterday morning. Was it really only a morning ago? As I drift off to sleep, I can’t help but remember the face of the girl with the bronze curls. She is so pale, so delicate looking. I won’t be surprised if she is the first to go.
In my dreams I cradle her to my breast and whisper in her ear, “I’ll love you forever.”
She turns her face, curls bouncing, cheeks dimpled with a smile. “Mommy, tell me again.”
But this time I don’t say anything. I just raise my hand, and claw out her eyes.
She doesn’t even cry as the blood runs down her cheeks.
I wake up screaming, clutching at sheets.
And I know the answer to how I’m going to watch them die.
I’m not.
I know what I have to do.
I don’t know how I’m going to do it, or if it’s even possible. But I know I have to do it, even if it means my own death.
I’m not going to watch the children die. I’m certainly not going to kill them.
No.
I’m going to save them.
The Morphing Games 