V. Bread

V

Bread
The Cold and the Free

 

      It was the cold that always seemed to bother her the most. No matter where you went or what you stood behind, the cold seemed to always find a way in, like water finding the lone crack in a clay pot.

 

      Ebima stood huddled with the other members of her village in front of the large view screen. The projected image and the equipment producing it were out of place antiques scattered on a forest floor: stark and artificial in a world of nature. It would have been almost picturesque had there not been two armed guards flanking the equipment.

 

      The War wasn’t mandatory viewing, of course, but everyone turned out to watch it 

anyway. This one in particular held great significance. Her State, her home, was in danger of being seized and assimilated depending on the outcome. There were lively debates in courthouses and saloons all over the Confederation of the Rockies about what would happen when the Pacific Kingdom took control. Ebima sorrowfully noted that nobody ever seemed to discuss what would happen if the Fed, as her people called themselves, went on to win tonight’s War. She supposed she couldn’t blame them for their assumptions.

 

      There were often violent arguments about how to receive their conquerors, but no real effort was made in preventing them. Such was the price of the freedom they held so dear: the First Mending. An ancient doctrine, the First Mending decreed that all speech, no matter how extreme, should be tolerated as it contributed to an overall freedom that healed any smaller wounds that might have been caused.

 

      Her school teacher’s words still rang in her ears even after all these years. The indoctrinating nature of it only served to accentuate the irony of it.

 

      Ebima hugged her small children closer in an attempt to warm the group as a whole. She almost complained aloud about how the ICEW was more than willing to provide projectors and armed guards for the War but that it was a shame they couldn’t be bothered for heaters. She decided against it. She wasn’t certain these foreign men would adhere to, or even care about, the First Mending. She took for granted the freedoms they enjoyed here. Freedoms she would die for. They were freedoms that the men on the screen in front of her were currently dying for.

 

      She felt a pang of burning embarrassment as she thought of the “Army” that was currently trying to avoid being slaughtered in front of tens of millions people. They were a rag tag bunch; the best of the best soldiers they had, which wasn’t saying much. Most of her people worked hard and lived harder, but combat was done in public debates, not on any battlefield. In the event violence did break out, chances were the two sides would share a juanarette or a flask of something pungent before the night was out.

 

      The boys’ faces on the screen caused her to look down at her own sons. Their eyes were transfixed. They were witnessing something primal that reverberated within them. Even though they didn’t understand it, even though they couldn’t name it, it permeated their being. Each flash of light on their wide-eyed faces was another layer of innocence stripped from them.

 

      Ebima, too, was wrestling with her instinct. It told her to cover their eyes, to carry them away from the carnage and the blood sport and to shield them. She wanted to return them to their wooden toys and tales by the fire of better days. But she had spoken too often and too publicly about the people’s need to confront the nature of death rather than to sterilize and broadcast it for profit. She couldn’t both preach overcoming their violent nature and hide it from those whom she loved.

 

Her instinct was wrong and she knew it. Yet she still found herself resisting the urge to hide them from the destruction. She recalled something her father the philosopher had always told her: Instinct could be caged, but not silenced.

 

      A cheer went up from the crowd as the screen showed a replay of the conflict that had just concluded. Two of their own had managed to corner and kill a Pacific Kingdom Soldier. The accomplishment was particularly impressive as they had only a machete and a clever trap improvised from string and whittled wood with which to fight. The Soldier’s gun lay smoldering on the ground next to him, a self-destruct feature activated by his death to disallow weapon claiming.

 

      While everyone else in the crowd squinted to absorb every detail of the victory, however minor, Ebima could only stare at her sons’ grins as they soaked in the experience. No, she decided, it wasn’t their grins; it was their eyes. The hunger. She sighed mentally. Caged, not silenced. That control would come one day. For now, she had to ensure they wouldn’t hide from it so they could, in time, confront it and control it.

 

      For the thousandth time, she doubted her methods. She loved the freedoms her people had and how important public discourse had become. Elections were held every eighteen months like clockwork and non-voters were generally derided or even shunned. There were just so many problems.

 

      Everyone was poor. The Mayor, the richest amongst them, was just a man who had had a few lucky business dealings and who kept a friendly rapport with the ICEW. While modern weapons were practically non-existent outside of the Hendecagon, local crime was still a problem and the poor and desperate often robbed from the poor and defenseless. And everyone, from the poorest Rock in his mountain-side shanty to the richest monarch on the North-East Seaboard, paid the War Tax.

 

 If they were to be absorbed by the Pacific Kingdom, it would be tragic, of course. But even a cruel king would provide for his subjects better than their useless Mayor. There would be security. A deterrent against crime. Order. She tried and failed to imagine preparing a dinner without keeping a wary eye on the ingredients that sat by an open window for fear of theft.

 

Even the ICEW’s methods, which she inherently distrusted and loathed, were at the very least effective. The lowest murder rate in history, to the point of non-existence. Conflict between the States had become regulated and sterilized. Good, peaceful citizens were allowed a pressure valve for all of their hate and violent urges. Even the Fed was allowed its freedoms, including the Mendings.

 

Not least of all, there might actually be food. She had forgotten what it felt like to walk around their village and not feel the constant pangs of hunger in her sides. Her children always ate first whenever food was found, but she paid for it in strength and energy. The hunger had become a constant companion, an unwanted presence that panged and prodded her. More often than not, her debates were ended when her body’s strength fled and she could go on no more.

 

It had been a scandal when the villagers had found out that their Mayor had been serving fruit at his dinner table. Nobody had seen it for months. Wildlife was scarce and commerce difficult with the mountainous terrain. The Mayor claimed he was one of them, but everyone had known who the fruit had come from and why ICEW was lauded so publicly from City Hall.

 

If one were to catch her on a particularly bad night, when the walls whistled with a bitterly cold wind and her children were crying from their inability to stay warm, she might find herself willing to pledge allegiance to the right provider. No matter what she did to the doors or the windows, no matter how many tattered blankets she bartered for or how closely her children were tucked into bed together, the cold always found a way in. It was all-pervasive.

 

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. The Rockies were self-determining and they had elected themselves into poverty and petty crime. Maybe a loss of control is what they needed. Maybe it was time for someone else to worry about the starving population for once.

 

A groan erupted from the crowd as one of their Soldiers, a boy named Hendrick she had heard about from a few towns away, sacrificed himself with a grenade in both hands in an attempt to even the numbers. He had partially succeeded. One Pacific Kingdom Solider lied dead while the other held his bleeding arm. Hendrick was no longer recognizable from the blast.

 

Ebima realized then that that was what true loss of control was. A man assigned by a governing body to fight and die for interests that concerned everyone but himself. In the end, only his final act had truly been his own choice. She winced and said a soft prayer for the healing of his soul in the afterlife.

 

Leaning down to place herself between the heads of her two sons, neither of whom had seen their thirteenth year, she whispered just softly enough for them to hear her:

 

“Life is a choice. Death is losing that choice. Don’t be afraid of having it stolen from you. Only fight to defend what is yours by right, unceasingly. Choice is all there is.”

 

They both nodded in understanding, even though she knew they didn’t, they couldn’t. Not yet. But one day, they would.

 

It was four against one now. It was the Offset from the beginning of the War who had survived his ten brothers-in-arms. It seemed appropriate that he would now be here at the end of it. She wasn’t sure whether to hope he would win or that his death would be painless and swift. All of their hopes for the Rockies as it was today rested in his hands. Hands, she noted, that were shaking as he desperately tried to scale a cliff wall to escape from his four pursuers.

 

 In the end, all she could do was choose to hope for the chance at something good, as unknown, unfathomable and unbelievable as it might seem to be.

 

She hugged her children against her tighter still. The cold always seemed to find a way in.