“I walk all the way back here, the least you can do is say hi,” she says. She stands in front of me. “Oh, I see, you’re not even talking to me now. ”
“No, it’s not that. I’m sorry.”
A breeze billows her hair with soft undulations, exposing the skin of her neck. “Look, I’m not your enemy here. Yet.” She scratches her wrist. “I guess we’re supposed to wait until the Hunt for that.”
And I find myself scratching my wrist in return. “Do me a favour,” I say. “If it comes down to only you and me in the Hunt, just shoot me in the pinkie toe, OK? No need to take me out with a shot through my eye.”
“Right pinkie or left?”
I scratch my wrist. “I’ll take the left. Just aim carefully, OK? It’s a small toe.”
“Deal,” she says.
High above us, the shape of a large bird sails across the night sky. Its wings span disproportionately large, unwieldy, and stiff. It circles around us, then dissolves in the distance.
“I came here to ask you something,” she says.
“No, you can’t have my FLUN.”
She doesn’t say anything. I turn to look at her, and she’s waiting with those emerald green eyes of hers, quietly, hopefully. As if she’s been waiting for this moment for a long time: when I’m really alone with her, not distracted, our eyes finally meeting and merging.
“Take me to the Gala.” Her voice is soft and even.
I start lifting my wrist to scratch it. But her arms dangle by her side, stationary. “For real?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“I don’t even know if it’s . . . it’s not like a school prom, you know. It’s the Gala. A splashy government affair. It’s a whole other thing.”
“I know,” she says. “It won’t be like a prom at all. It will be a thousand times more special.”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“It’ll mean a lot to me.”
I glance over her shoulder, scan the horizon. “Look, I don’t know how to say this. I know the Gala will be special and classy because of the music, the media, the red carpet, the dancing, the food—”
“It will be special because of you. Because you’ve asked me to be with you.”
I look away. “I don’t know.”
And she moves suddenly towards me, swiftly closing the distance between us. She takes my elbow in her hand. The touch of her skin on mine jolts me. “Is it so hard to like me?” she asks, whispering, her eyes searching mine. “Is it really that hard?”
I don’t say anything.
“Can you just pretend, can you just put on a mask, then?” And something about those words – or maybe it’s the way she says them – makes me look into her eyes, longer than I ever have with anyone but my father. “Because you’re really ripping me apart inside.”
“It’s not you—”
“Just pretend,” she whispers, “that you’re really into me. That you like the shape of my lips, the softness of my skin, the scent of my breath, the colour of my eyes. And pretend that you can even see past all that, the surface, that you know me deeper than that. The hidden beneath. And that you are still drawn to me, except even more so. Imagine there is nothing else right now but me standing before you, that no one else in the world exists. Not the other hunters, not the staffers, not the hepers. Not even the moon or the stars or the mountains. And that you have longed for me for a long time, and I am here now, right before you. Pretend all that, just for one night.” Her free hand reaches to my back and pulls me closer to her. We’re only inches away now. A gust blows; strands of my hair fall into my eyes.
And she reaches up and brushes aside my bangs, her fingers trailing slowly along the side of my head, above my ear, and down the side of my neck.
Years of resolve to freeze my heart and cauterise my feelings for her, and this one act is the first personable and genuine touch I have felt in years of living alone and living lonely. It triggers something in me. A seismic shifting within, an eruption of what has lain only frailly dormant. Her eyes lock on mine, their touch as tangible as the feel of her hand on my elbow, but deeper, more probing. I feel the yearning of emotions I thought were long dead. An unravelling in me.
“Please?” she pleads. “Take me?”
And I surprise myself by nodding my head. She shakes with delight as she grips my elbow harder, her long, thin bicep flexing, dissolving, flexing, dissolving. I take her elbow in my hand now, the etiquette of an invitation accepted. She tilts her head backward and closes her eyes slightly, eyelids fluttering, lips parted. But then her upper lip quivers into a shaky snarl, and two fangs jut out, wetly white and razor-sharp. Fangs that would, in five seconds flat, rip into my chest, pummel through my rib cage, and tear out my still-beating heart.
Why have I let myself forget, why, in a moment of weakness, did I give in? I can never forget that her beauty is laced with poison, that her lips veil twin rows of knives, that her heart is enclosed by a razor-sharp rib cage. She is impossible to me, untouchable, unreachable.
My hand on her elbow clamps down hard, with anger, with loathing, sinking deep into her bloodless flesh. But she misinterprets the force of my emotions and lifts her face to the night sky, shaking more fervently. And I realise how, from the outside, on the other side of the mask, how easy it is for loathing to be mistaken for longing.
With dawn soon approaching, I walk Ashley June back to her room. We make arrangements to meet tomorrow after dusk – she wants to come down and get dressed in the library so we can head to the Gala together, linked arm in arm. “It’s going to be so amazing,” she gushes as I leave.
I head back to the library. Within minutes, the shutters come down. I wait a while longer to be safe, then head outside. I’m thirsty again and in need of another wash. Stepping outside under the brightening skies, I glance at the main building to make sure the shutters are down. And then I’m making for the Dome, double time. This time I have three empty plastic bottles, tied together with a short length of twine, slung over my shoulder. The bottles bump against one another, making random hollow sounds like the thumps of a drunken drummer. The Dome hasn’t descended yet; I keep saying now and pointing at the Dome. Now. It doesn’t move. Now. Still doesn’t heed my command; the glass walls don’t budge.
Halfway there, a hum vibrates in the ground, barely discernible at first, then unmistakable. The Dome walls descend, the circular opening at the top widening as the glass wall sinks into the ground. Dawn light plays off the moving glass, swirling like ribbons around the plains in a menagerie of colour. And then the lights tail off, the humming stops. The Dome is gone.
I stand about a hundred yards from the pond and wait. It’s better not to take any chances: despite what they must now know about me, they might still charge out of their mud huts (at least that heper girl, anyway) ready to spear me. That’s the thing with these hepers: they can be so unpredictable, like zoo animals gone wild. The front door to a mud hut suddenly swings open. A male heper – young, about my age – stumbles out, bed-headed, legs rickety and stiff as it makes its way to the pond. It doesn’t see me; it’s squinting against the harsh morning light.
It’s not until the heper splashes water on its face and is gulping water from cupped hands that its eyes drift up at me. Its hands instantly drop to its sides, water falling down to its feet. It beats a hasty retreat towards the mud huts, then suddenly stops as if catching itself. Glances back. Sees I’m still standing, that I haven’t moved at all.
I raise my hands, palms facing forward, hoping to convey: I mean no harm.
It turns tail and begins to flee.
“Wait! Stop!”
And it does. Over its shoulder, eyes wide, face ridden with fear. But with curiosity as well. As with the heper girl yesterday, feelings pour off its face without restraint, like a zoo animal shamelessly scratching its behind before a crowd of derisive spectators. These expressions: so extreme, flowing like a waterfall. It stares at me with wide eyes.
“Sissy!
” it yells, and it’s my turn to take a few steps back. In shock. The thing talks. “Sissy!” it says louder, the inflections coming out clearly even in that short word.
“No, I—” I stammer, uncertain what to say. Sissy? Why is it calling me a sissy?
“Sissy,” it shouts urgently, but its tone is bereft of ridicule. It’s a neutral tone, but with a hint of urgency, as if calling for help.
“I don’t understand,” I say because, well, I don’t understand. “I just want water.” I gesture towards the pond. “Wa-ter.”
“Sissy,” it shouts again, and a door to a mud hut flies open. It’s the heper girl, slightly dishevelled, its eyes grabbing at alertness, flicking off sleepiness. It surveys the scene quickly, soaking in the scene. Its eyes land on mine for a second, flick behind me, then return to me again.
“It’s OK, David,” it says to the first heper. “Remember what I told you yesterday. He won’t hurt us. He’s like us.”
I’m thunderstruck. These hepers speak. They are intelligent, not savages.
The heper girl walks towards me, strides long and confident. As it walks past mud huts, doors open and more hepers come out, following the heper girl. It stops in front of the pond. “Right?” it asks, staring at me.
All I can do is stare at it.
“Right?” it asks again, and for the first time I realise it’s wielding a long axe in its left hand.
“Right,” I say.
We stare at each other for a long time.
“Have you come back for more water?” it asks.
“Yes.”
A group of four other hepers – all male – are gathered behind the heper girl, peering at me. I see one whisper to another, then a nod in agreement.