ONE - Atherton

Atherton, an orphan from the Outskirts, steals food from inside the city walls of Xantom to feed his baby brother and sister.

Atherton crouched behind a barrel and watched the front door.  The scent of torch oil wafted out of the barrel and filled his nose, creating a burning sensation inside.  He breathed through his mouth and kept his focus on the door.  It would only be a matter of time before the man who lived in the house left to use the sewage ditch near the outside edge of the city.  It didn’t matter who you were or what your status in Xantom was, everybody had to make waste.  When this particular man did what came naturally, Atherton would make his move.

It was early; the city was quiet.  Atherton always woke up before the people inside the city.  He wouldn’t be able to survive if he didn’t.  It was dark, too, but it was always dark in Xantom.  The only light came from torches at the end of every street.  They didn’t give off a lot of light, but to the people who lived here, it was more than enough.

Beneath each torch was a barrel full of oil to make sure they never went out.  If they ever did, nobody would survive the cold.  As long as the Hunters kept returning with the carcasses of Bareland Beasts, they would be able to continue making oil and there wouldn’t be a problem.

But these weren’t things Atherton concerned himself with.  He had walked here barefoot in the cold.  His fingers and toes were numb.  His body was shaking, but he hardly noticed.  He was used to being cold.  He hadn’t had any new furs to wear since he had cut up his last cloak to make clothes for his brother and sister.  They were getting bigger every day, and seemed to need new clothes all the time to fit their growing bodies.  Unfortunately, this left Atherton without something warm to wear.  He would lay awake at night, afraid to fall asleep for fear of the cold talking hold and keeping him from ever waking up again.

Saxon and Sephora were only three and four years old, respectively, and couldn’t yet care for themselves.  Atherton tried every day to teach them a new skill that would help them to survive, but there was only so much that a four year-old was capable of doing.

Atherton exhaled into his hands to try to warm them, but it was no use�"at this point even his breath was cold.  He peered again around the barrel, but there was still no sign of movement.  To anybody else, this waiting around would have been frustrating.  To Atherton, it was just another reminder that he was still alive.

Atherton knew his life was precious.  Life was a rare commodity in Xantom.  His mother had died giving birth to Saxon.  While Atherton had been devastated by the loss, his father seemed not to notice, or at least not to care.  He showed no signs of feeling anything at all, and continued going on expeditions into the Barelands with the rest of the Hunters.  It was on one of these hunting trips that his father had been killed, leaving Atherton to take care of baby Sephora and the newborn Saxon.  He had been 13 at the time.

The door he was watching creaked open.  A burly man in his early thirties stepped out into the cold.  His long brown beard helped to shield his face from the temperature.  In his right hand he held a large torch, in his left, an axe.  That’s a strange thing to bring with you if you’re going to the ditch.  Is there a lot of competition for pee space these days?  I’m glad I went before I came into the city…

That was when Atherton realized who he was looking at.  This wasn’t any Xantomian stranger, this was Emeric, a man Atherton had seen fairly often before his mother had died.  Atherton’s father wasn’t much for entertaining people or making friends, and all sense of community had vanished from their tent after her passing.  Her warmth had made the tent feel like a home, even if it was only a few pieces of fabric held up by sticks.  When she passed, it didn’t feel that way any more.  Atherton tried his best to channel her when he was with Saxon and Sephora, but it wasn’t easy.

Atherton felt a twang of guilt when he saw that it was Emeric who came through the door.  Then he remembered that Emeric had never been very fond of him, focusing instead on his mother whenever he came to visit.  Don’t feel bad.  You need it more than he does.  He has a house, food, and a job; all you have is a tent and two mouths to feed.  Emeric slowly plodded up the street.  His massive, sturdy frame made it difficult for him to move quickly.  Besides, he looks bigger than ever.  He’s not going to miss it if I take a little food.  As soon as Emeric turned a corner and the light from his torch disappeared, Atherton got up and made his way towards the door.  He peered up the street in both directions to make sure he was alone, then pushed the door open and quickly stepped into the house.

It was pitch dark inside.  I can’t even see my nose.  He raised a hand up in front of his face.  Nothing.  Great.  Not that he was expecting it, but no sounds emitted from anywhere in the house, either.  Just cold, dark silence.  He flared his nostrils and inhaled slowly.  There was the unmistakable smell of a recently extinguished fire, a common smell among Xantomian residences.  Then there was the residual smell of cooked meat.  Bareland Beast.  It didn’t smell quite right, probably due to being old.  The Hunters didn’t gather as much as they used to; it had to last a long time.

He stepped forward slowly, cautiously.  He held his hands in front of him, hoping to come in contact with something that would help him gain his bearings.  His foot made contact with a chair, which skidded just a few inches across the floor, but it was enough to make a loud and unmistakable sound that reverberated off the walls.  Someone must have heard.  Move quickly.  Heart pounding, Atherton reached and felt the table that the chair had been pushed under.  In the center of the table, a thick slab of the cooked meat sat waiting for him, perfectly prepared and neatly wrapped.

Atherton’s mouth watered, but he couldn’t be too greedy.  He pulled his knife out of his pocket and cut off a sliver.  He took this, wrapped it in a piece of fabric he had brought, and put it into his bag.  After this, he made his way towards the smell of the fireplace.  As he suspected, there was a small pile of wood sitting in front, ready to be put into the fire when Emeric came back.  Atherton grabbed a single piece of firewood and made his way to the front door.

And as quickly as he had entered Emeric’s home, he was back outside again, moving at a measured pace up the street towards his home.  He took a brief moment to glance around and see if anyone had heard him or noticed him.  One man was coming out of his front door but he didn’t show any interest in Atherton.  Just keep moving, he told himself.  Act naturally and he won’t have any reason to suspect you.

Then, from out of the shadows, someone lunged out and grabbed Atherton by the arm.  He instinctively tried to pull away but whoever it was had a firm grip.

“Gotcha!” a high-pitched voice exclaimed.

“Esmarine?” Atherton said.

“The one and only.”

“You have to stop doing that!  You scared me.”

“You should be more careful.  You keep making that much noise and one of these days, someone’s going to catch you.”

“I wasn’t making any noise.”

“Please.  If I didn’t know better I might have thought a Bareland Beast was loose in the city.”

Atherton couldn’t help but smile at Esmarine’s playful attitude.  It was nice to have her company.  No one else in the city even knew Atherton existed, or had ever existed.  But she treated him like anyone else�"like he mattered.  Years ago, Esmarine had lived in the Outskirts with her parents, but something had happened and now she and her father lived inside the city walls.  That feels like ages ago.

“I have to get this stuff back before people start waking up.  Saxon and Sephora might be up soon as well.”

“Let me come with you!  I’m not doing anything right now.”

This was a game they played.  She would ask if she could come, he would tell her no, because it was too dangerous, and then she would follow him home anyway.  He was almost certain that if he said she could come, that she wouldn’t want to.

“No,” he said.  “It isn’t safe for you outside the city.  Not anymore.”

The two of them walked up the street together.  Atherton walked with a measured, determined pace, while Esmarine often stopped to study something and would run to catch up.  She was agile, and fast, and was able to zig-zag through the streets while still keeping up with Atherton.  I’m sure that will come in handy for her one day, Atherton always thought.

“Why do you always follow me home?”  It wasn’t the first time he had asked.  He suspected it wouldn’t be the last.

“I don’t know,” she said.  “I like it out there.”

They were nearing the edge of the city.  The stone wall that wrapped around the edge of Xantom loomed ahead.  Atherton reached the wall and bent down to pick up the torch that he had hidden beside it.  He lit the torch using a nearby flame and continued.  A short way up ahead he would find what he was looking for�"the secret way out of Xantom, the break in the wall.

How long this break in the wall had been here, Atherton didn’t know.  It had been here since before he had discovered it, and he had been very young at the time. Since then, he’d used the break countless times to sneak into the city and steal food and other goods for himself and his siblings.  He had never seen anybody else using it, not from either side of the wall.  As far as he knew, he and Esmarine were the only people who knew it existed.

How it could have gotten there without anyone knowing about it was beyond Atherton.  He assumed that it had simply developed over time, natural aging of the stone, and no one had discovered it due to its location.  Inside the city, it was hidden from view by a number of vacant old homes.  In the Outskirts, the break was a very long distance from where people lived.  They would have to follow the wall all the way around to where it met the Dome, which was over an hour of walking, and everyone knew there was nothing there worth seeing.  Why expend the extra energy to see something that gained you nothing?

People didn’t venture to the Dome.  Its job was to keep them safe, which is what it did.  No one remembered who put it there or why, but none of that mattered.  All anyone cared about is that they were alive.  Struggling, but alive.

People in the Outskirts ventured out of their homes for one reason only�"to head to the city gate to request permission for entry.  As long as curfew wasn’t in effect, they would likely be allowed inside to barter for food or supplies.  Typically, it was food.  The only reason to seek out a second entrance to the city would be if you were trying to go undetected.

Atherton had discovered the break when he was a child.  His mother and father had been arguing and he was scared.  Rather than stay and wait for the fight to be over, he ran away, all the way to the city gate.  Nobody chased after him.  Apparently they had been so entrenched in their argument that they hadn’t even noticed he was gone.

The guards at the front gate wouldn’t let him enter the city without his parents, as it was against the rules.  Atherton didn’t know what to do, but he knew he didn’t want to go back home.  He briefly thought about hiding with Esmarine, but he didn’t want her to see him like this.  Instead, he had simply followed the wall.

He walked for what felt like eternity and finally circled all the way around to the Dome, which he had never seen before.  The material the Dome was made of glimmered, even in darkness.  Atherton had been mesmerized by it; he simply stood in awe, both of its mystical glimmering and of its massive size; the fact that it rose above him and continued on into the darkness farther than he could even imagine.  He looked up and wondered how high it went, and if anyone had ever been to the top of it; if it was even possible to get to the top.

Finally he decided to touch it.  He pressed his hand up against the Dome, which felt cold and wet, almost slimy.  He wondered what was on the other side.  All he had been told was that the Dome protected them from the outside, but never what “outside” meant.

He had asked his father once.  “What’s on the outside of the Dome?”  He hadn’t been pleased with the answer.

“Nothing.  Inside the Dome is all there is.  And when we’ve exhausted the resources here, that’s the end of the human race.  It’s all so pointless…” and he had left the tent, wandered off into the night, grumbling to himself.

“Don’t listen to him,” his mother had said when he was gone.  “He’s in a bad mood because the Hunt went poorly today.  But things will get back on track.  They always have before.”  She pressed a hand on her large belly, smiling.  “Outside the Dome is whatever you want it to be.”

Whatever I want it to be.  When he pulled his hand away, his handprint left the faintest residual yellow glow, the color of a lit candle.  It glowed bright for a second before disappearing; leaving no trace that it had been touched, only the shimmering that had been there before.

This had amused him greatly, and he spent the next half hour drawing shapes, lines, and funny designs.  He rubbed his hands quickly in all directions to see how much space he could light up at once.  For that brief moment in time, he forgot what he had been running from.

That bliss vanished as soon as he heard his father calling his name.  He turned towards the sound.  The darkness and cold swallowed up sound and made it impossible to see, so Atherton couldn’t be sure if he was imagining it.  He listened hard for a few seconds and it came again.  The sound was distant and small, but the anger was real.  He knew he was in trouble as soon as his father reached him.

He reached his hand out for the city wall so that he could follow it back… but it wasn’t there.  Instead, there was a gap, and stones were scattered around on the ground as though someone had punched a massive hole.  He peered his head through but saw only darkness.  Every part of him screamed to go through, to see what was inside, but when he heard his father’s voice a third time, he snapped out of it.  He turned to go, but knew that he would return.

He caught up with his father who immediately slapped him across the face.  It wasn’t the worst he had received from his father, but it was hard enough to knock him to the ground.  He braced himself for another blow, but instead his father had grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet.

“If you run away from us again, I’m not coming after you.  I don’t care how much your mother begs me.  We don’t have enough food to be walking this far.  You think about that.”

He didn’t have to think about it, he knew it was true.  And for a long time, he didn’t leave again.  But when his mother died, he had returned to the break in the wall.  Every day, his father would scream at them.  “It’s your fault she wasn’t eating enough.  If you weren’t here she wouldn’t have had to give it all up and she wouldn’t have died.”

Atherton needed peace and quiet and remembered the break�"the perfect place to go if you wanted to be alone.  This time, though, instead of standing outside, he had gone through to discover that it was a secret entrance into Xantom.

He had used it ever since.

Esmarine ran ahead.  They were close to his home now, and surely she wanted to see Saxon and Sephora.  He had a sneaking suspicion that they were the only reason she ever followed him home.  Atherton held out his torch, illuminating the tent.  Es had already gone inside.  He set down his bag, crouched down and followed her inside.

Saxon was still sleeping.  Sephora was sitting in Esmarine’s lap, giggling.  Atherton smiled.  It was nice to hear someone laughing for a change.  He didn’t have the skills to make his siblings happy.  Every time he tried, they would squirm away or grunt, but Esmarine always managed to get them to smile.

“This isn’t a good place for them to be growing up,” Esmarine said.

“We don’t have anywhere else we can go.  It’s either here or the Barelands, and we wouldn’t last five minutes out there.”

Esmarine leaned in close, speaking softly, like a secret.  “You could live in the city.”

“You know we can’t do that.”

“Yes!  You could live with us.  With me.”

It was a nice thought.  The idea of living with Es, with his brother and sister growing up in a proper house with regular food was a good one.  But it would never work.

“Your father would report us.  We don’t have the right to live inside the city.  We don’t have any special skills.  And if they found out that our dad was a Hunter?  We’d be exiled the first day.”

“My father doesn’t know who you are.  I could say�"”

“Say what?  That someone inside the city had three children that he somehow never knew about?  Someone had evaded the Healer and birthed three children on their own, and now those people are dead and their children need a place to stay but there aren’t any bodies?  Look, it sounds great.  And I appreciate you offering, but it would only end up getting us killed.”

Es huffed.  “Then you should at least get a bigger tent.”

“Bigger tent!  Bigger tent!” Sephora echoed.  “Afferty, we can has bigger tent?”

Atherton sighed and turned to Esmarine.  “Where am I supposed to get that?”

“The same place you got those, I would imagine,” she said, gesturing towards the wood and meat he had stolen.

“It works with little things.  People don’t notice if a slice of meat or a tiny piece of firewood goes missing, but if I suddenly made out with a giant hide… even if I managed to get out without getting caught�"”

“Relax, I was kidding.  I’ll bring you something.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

“Where are you going to get it?”

“Did I not tell you?  My dad got promoted.  He’s on the King’s Guard now.”

The King’s Guard.  Atherton felt like she had slapped him.  The King’s Guard was everything that was wrong with Xantom today�"greedy, overfed, self-righteous men who cared only for themselves.  People said that the King’s Guard lived even better than King Xanthus himself.  As a reward for their service, the Guard got the majority of the spoils from the Hunts, as well as first pick on what they wanted to take.  Only after they had taken as much as they could carry would the rest be distributed amongst the remainder of the city’s few hundred inhabitants.  The Hunters, who had done the work collecting the food and supplies, got the very last pick.  The idea was this way, the Hunters would be incentivized to work harder and bring back enough food for everyone to share.  The problem was that lately there hadn’t been enough food to hunt.

And now Esmarine was basically one of them.  The cause of the problem that had killed both of his parents and left him alone in the Outskirts raising two babies with nothing.

“Lucky him,” Atherton said sarcastically.  “He’s certainly made a name for himself after getting out of the Outskirts.”

“Don’t be mean.  He worked hard and now he’s made it to the top.  You could do that yourself if you weren’t so busy stealing.”

“I do what I have to do to keep my family alive.”

“Then let me bring you something!  You don’t have to steal!  Please, we have extra.  My dad won’t even notice it’s gone.  I can�"”

“I said no,” Atherton said.  “Your King’s Guard guilt is no good out here.”  He spoke firmly, and there was nothing more to say.  Es sat in silence, averting her eyes to the ground.  I hurt her feelings.  But she shouldn’t be offering me charity.  I can take care of things myself.

Sephora piped up, breaking the silence.  “I’m hungry,” she said.

Atherton reached into his bag and unwrapped the meat he had taken.  He tore off a small piece and handed it to her.

“Here you go, Seph.  Eat up.”

“Thank you Afferty!” Sephora ate greedily, finishing her meat quickly.

Esmarine watched with sadness in her eyes.  “I don’t want to watch you starve out here,” she said.

“Then don’t watch.”

Esmarine lifted Sephora off her lap and set her down gently.  She got up to go.  “Will I see you tomorrow?”

“If you want,” Atherton said.

She looked as though he had slapped her.  Before she could let on how she was feeling, she spun around and disappeared from the tent.

Reviews

[DoormanDan]

I am seriously suprised this book hasnt gotten any attention, because this is one of the strongest chapters I have read in ANY book! You have created an awesome world, and Athertons struggle to survive in it really kept me hooked from the beginning to the end! I am speechless right now. :)

[Justin Xavier Smith]

Thank you so much! I assume a lot of people haven't read it because A) I'm fairly new to the site and B) it's hard for people to invest this much time and attention to something if they aren't sure it's going to be good before they start. Hopefully your review can help change that :) your words mean a lot. I very much appreciate the read

[DoormanDan]

No problem! :)

[Mefi]

This story is a lot to take in. feels like its a movie. like one of those epic movies. And a city without light? Always dark.. how come?
But I most commend your a very good writer. It takes a lot to bring those crazy imaginations of yours to light.

[R.M.C]

Very well written. I can definitely place myself there, which is key for a successful book. Well done.

[Justin Xavier Smith]

Thanks! Setting was very important for me. Also, the story. lol

[Ishita Dixit]

Wow!
This was an emotional read. I imagined the scenes all along.
Nicely done!

[Justin Xavier Smith]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed :)