Fear Me Not (The EVE Chronicles) (16 page)

Ulsi’s eyes soften, but she doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

“I was there during the
patra
you interrupted. He was very concerned for you when you two fell.”

“Like I said – he hangs around me to get info on Shadus. It’s not anything serious. Are you going to Owakess, Ulsi?”

She nods. “With Dakota. She’s very –”

“
I’m very excited
!” Dakota shrills. She lowers her voice. “I mean, ahem. I’m v-very excited.”

I snicker. “It’s nice to see you yelling. You’d never do it a while ago.”

“I know. I-I used to think it was rude. But somewhere along the way I realized it was actually r-really fun!”

Even Ulsi laughs this time.

***

Since the cafeteria is being rebuilt, Owakess is being held in the auditorium – the fancy place where the school plays are held. The walls are draped with sheets of blue, gold, and red silk embossed with Asara’s symbol in white. Green boron torches are placed high up, where no one can reach them, the flames moving like hazy liquid emeralds. Refreshment stands laden with fruit punch, soda, cookies, and candy line the lobby, and two entire tables of different kinds of emotion vials are left out for the Gutters to choose from. We all mill in the lobby while the Owakess dancers prepare the stage. The Gutters all wear the same robe – it looks identical to the
patra
uniform, but instead of silver, each Gutter wears their corresponding faction color. I show up in my red sweater, feeling a little lost. The Gutter faculty is here, too, wearing their colors. Ms. Gianca nods at me, and Yulan smiles. Even Mr. Targe’s showed up, with a female Gutter teacher who’s an Executioner. He, likewise, wears red. It seems everyone’s in pairs. The people who came alone or without wearing red, gold, or blue. The latter are quickly pulled to the side by the Gutter faculty and given a colored uniform to wear over their normal clothes.

Besides the weird mandatory dress code, the air of excitement is palpable. The Gutters look thrilled, and pleased, like they weren’t expecting anywhere near this lavish a celebration. I hear some of them murmuring how lucky they are the human government decided to throw an Owakess at all. It almost makes me feel bad for them. But then they gasp and point at the refreshment table, apparently surprised at how many vials of fear there are.

“I haven’t had fear since last Owakess!”

“Oh, it’s going to be delicious!”

“They have fear-
tsori
, too! That’s amazing!”

They talk about it like it’s candy, some kind of treat. My stomach twists a little, my EVE organ twitching. I wave at Dakota and Ulsi across the room, Dakota wearing a t-shirt with a yellow daisy on it. Shadus said he had to go to the bathroom, and took off. While I wait, I meander over to the refreshment table and grab some M&M’s and a can of root beer. I spot Taj walking through the crowd, stopping humans from running in the lobby with stern reprimands. He’s wearing a gold robe with really long sleeves, and white Rahm symbols embroidered into it. I look around for Raine uselessly – there’s no way she’d be here; she’s still recovering. But I eat my own words when the doors open, cold air wafting in.

It’s Raine.

The crowd goes quiet. Undeterred, she walks normally, her head held high. The bandages are off. Her long hair is swept back in a ponytail, displaying the ghastly, mottled burn on her face. It burned her eyebrow off, and scarred her cheek like a tear-trail from the corner of her eye. Her top eyelid fused with her brow, but her bright blue eyes still twinkle. Her left hand is likewise dappled brown and white, like ripples in a pond. Certain patches of skin stretch over each other, healed at awkward angles. But somehow, it doesn’t detract from her beauty in the slightest. She’s all smiles, the crowd watching her. Her good eye is perfectly done with makeup, her lips plump and pink with gloss and her earrings glistening with tiny sapphires. The nails on her bad hand are painted with perfectly sky-blue polish, and the blue silk uniform she wears is a five times longer in the sleeves than the other Gutter uniforms. It’s embroidered all over with hundreds of symbols; Rahm symbols. But unlike Taj, the symbols are evenly split down the middle – half of them done in white thread, the other half in black. She wears bright blue killer heels to match, and waves at me.

“Vic! There you are!”

I steel myself as we come face-to-face.

“I’m not leaving Green Hills, Raine,” I say. Her blue eyes go wide with astonishment, then she smiles.

“Don’t worry about that tonight, okay? It’s Owakess. Tonight is only about celebrating. I won’t try to convince you of anything other than to eat more human candy.”

She claps her hands in delight when she sees the emotion vials.

“
Tvak’ra
! And
guree
! Oh, I’m going to eat well tonight.”

“You look good,” I say. “Sorry. I should’ve said that first.”

“The crowd doesn’t seem to think so,” She sighs, picking up a vial. They’re murmuring, staring at her intently. I glare at a few, and they cower and scuttle away.

“They’ll get used to it,” I assure her. She turns to me and smiles, her voice shaking.

“The humans will definitely get used to it. You’re charming like that. But the Gutters? You have to understand, Vic, Gutter culture doesn’t understand deformities. Our medical technology can erase them all, and always has. They’ll never understand why someone would choose to remain like this.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I echo her words back at her. “But there’s something very wrong with them.”

She looks up, blue eyes watering. She looks back down at the vial in her shaking hands, and it happens in a blur. She hugs me, tight and around the neck.

“Thank you,” She murmurs. Over her shoulder I see Shadus coming out of the bathroom, now in a blood-red robe that matches his eyes, the sleeves long like Raine’s and the Rahm embroidery black instead of Taj’s white. He catches my eye, looks at Raine hugging me, and nods. It’s grim, and dour, but it carries weight.

‘The first human and Gutter to be friends openly won’t be well-received,’
his voice echoes in my head.

‘Just b-because there’ll be trouble doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it,’
Dakota’s voice echoes too.

I hug Raine back.

The crowd slowly goes back to their own conversations. The glances and wary looks still come Raine’s way, but it isn’t so isolated and obvious. The lights of the lobby dim suddenly, and a Gutter teacher acting as the usher announces the Owakess is about to begin. People start moving to the theater. Raine smiles, wiping at her eyes.

“Let’s go. The last thing you want is a bad seat.”

We meet up with Ulsi and Dakota, and I introduce them to Raine. We pick seats in the middle-left, squirming excitedly as the theater fills up. Taj slides in to sit by Ulsi. Shadus spots us and sits to the right of Raine. And for a second, we’re all together, united and just okay with each other.

And then the lights go down, and a hush blankets the crowd. The purple velvet curtain lifts, and Raine gasps.

“A square stage? Not round?”

“It’s traditional in human theater,” Shadus clarifies.

“Shhh!” Dakota hisses, and they instantly shut up. When the actors slowly file out from the sides, my mouth nearly drops open. Every single one of them is dressed in a beautiful, skintight suit, colored with mottled greens, purples, and blues. The hues are iridescent and luminous, like a butterfly’s wing, and shimmer under the theater lights. Some are darker, some lighter, some purples look almost black and others are so pale they seem white. Their faces are made up with make up to blend into the suit, their hair covered and replaced by rigid fabric spikes that line down their spine. The suits must be implanted with lights, because they glow from the inside in faint pulses.

Taj seems particularly shook up at the sight, his eyes a little moist.

“It’s a pale mockery,” Raine whispers to me, “And it lacks so many things, but those are our skins. Our old bodies. Some actors have color contacts in to represent key players of the Grand War who were
sotho
.”

I spot red eyes, gold, blue, and other colors I haven’t seen on
sotho
before – bright orange, white, pale pink, and a deep forest green. Other factions, probably. But their skin is so beautiful, I only pay seconds of attention to the eye colors. The actors line up, bowing to the crowd. The Gutter crowd stands and bows, and us humans scrabble to bow quickly with them.

“
Um’saa tir rosak
!” The actors shout in unison.

“
Um’saa ellu morata
!” The crowd shouts back, and sits. And the dance begins.

Child Gutters play the roles of child Asara and Umala, one of them dressed in pure white, the other in pure black. They leap and bound across the stage with such grace it’s hard to believe they’re kids. It looks like they’ve been dancing all their lives. Unlike human dance, Gutter dance is a constant movement, and it looks more like a martial art than anything. Asara and Umala kick and jab around each other, never touching. It’s almost
patra
, but much slower so as not to give humans any clue they have superior reflexes, and more ceremonial – after every few ‘mock’ fights, the actors bow to one another, and go back to leaping across the stage. Sometimes they stop and shout in Rahm at each other, an entire conversation taking place that we can’t understand. Raine tries to translate, but they speak too fast, and I hush her so she can pay attention to the dance. She’s obviously enraptured – her face glowing. She’s not the only one; even Shadus looks happy, his mouth curved in a smile. Every Gutter is paying close attention. Sometimes, the actors will turn to the crowd and shout a question in Rahm, and the crowd will shout many answers back, like they’re telling the actors what to do. There’s no music, but several musicians stand in the center, chanting in so many tones it almost sounds like singing. Sometimes they’re loud, other times they’re so quiet you can barely hear them. Their voices emulate the wind – hissing and wailing – or they screech in symphony to emulate the dying cry of a
lemak
.

The dance tells the story of Asara and Umala’s childhood – as twin sisters living in a remote village in the desert. Asara and Umala have fun together, and are very close. They discover their
zol
power one day when they’re out hunting with their fathers. An actor dressed up as a lemak - a massive hairy beast, like a Chinese dancing lion but with a flat face, more horns, and rust-colored fur - glows green and keels over dead.

I didn’t notice it before because of the beautiful, distracting skin, but the background of the play is a black canvas. Actors in likewise black suits, who almost blend in, use what look like bo staves with long hairs on each end to paint a picture on the canvas. Their movements look like martial arts, too, but they only move, and therefore paint, when the actors say a line in Rahm, or dance out an important scene. Then the bo staves are like pinwheels, fast and nigh-invisible, save for the broad streaks of color they leave behind – red, green, pink, yellow. 

The child actors for Umala and Asara are replaced with adult versions, and they dance the meeting of Umala, Asara, and a Gutter called Ferek, whom Umala and Asara both instantly fall in love with. Ferek courts them both. When Asara giggles or Umala sighs in a lovestruck way, the black canvas in the back blossoms with rosy pinks and bright, happy oranges that meld like a sunset. But then Umala and Asara start to fight over Ferek’s affection, and the canvas is switched out, replaced with a fresh one that is quickly doused in bloody reds and deep, ominous blues. The musician’s chants turn harsh and biting, like the barks of a dog across broken glass. Ferek chooses Asara, and Umala is heartbroken, the canvas all dark, royal purples and tortured, confused neon yellows.

When Asara and Umala part - Umala leaving for the mountains and Asara staying - the canvas is spotted in gentle arcs of sorrowful lavender and light, tearful grays. The musicians wail, their voices soft, as if they’re begging someone to come back. But Umala’s fury and resentment can’t be stopped. She leaves and comes back, striking down Gutters with nothing more than a wave of her hand.

“Hey,” Dakota pulls at my sleeve. “W-Where did Raine and Taj go?”

I look around – Shadus is gone from his seat, too. Ulsi leans over to us and murmurs.

“They are taking their places for the final battle.”

“They’re p-part of this?” Dakota asks.

“Watch,” Ulsi says simply.

The dancers playing Asara and Umala dart offstage, the other dancers covering their exit by doing an elaborate battle-dance. Red and brown paint splashes on the canvas, with broad, angry strokes. The chanters sing aggressive, rapid tones. And then all at once, it goes quiet, the paint stops and the Gutters fall to the ground. Standing on the right side of the stage is Taj, on the left side is Shadus, and in the center is Raine.

“
E’n mirias tokk Umala berei, oual
!” Taj shouts. The crowd shouts back, but this time they all respond the same way, in one thunderous roar;

“
Av
Umala il’fai
!”

It’s a simple sentence. Even I can understand it.
Umala must die
.

Raine walks over to Shadus, and they bow to each other. Suddenly, Shadus lashes out, Raine ducking his blows as the two of them move backwards across the stage. Shadus leaps, lunges, and Raine bobs and weaves, leading him ever closer to Taj. When they’re close enough to touch, Raine leaps away, and Taj strikes out at Shadus, holding his open hand like a blade just above Shadus’ neck. One long, bold white streak is slathered on the canvas, and the musicians, who had been hissing ever louder, go quiet.

The crowd is silent, and then it goes wild, cheering and jubilant shouting rising into the ceiling. Taj, Raine, and Shadus bow to the crowd, the dancers and musicians and painters coming out and bowing with them. The humans clap, not really knowing what else to do. The cheering is so loud the applause is lost. The quiet, well-mannered Gutters are erupting, and it’s both unsettling and nice to see. They’re finally smiling. They’re finally getting to show their true emotions, instead of being forced to wear the polite mask all the time. This is their culture, I think as I watch Shadus and the others bow. This is who they are, and how they exist.