|The Red Raven|

Chapter One

Nothing was quite like a ration day rush, I thought, the queue was piling up behind me and it was already stacked up in front of me. The building that loomed above me was awful, it was a wooden shack that had been rotting for as long as I could remember. The windows were boarded up except for the middle one which was open enough to fit a single old man. I had affectionately named him Wrinkles, several years ago I actually discovered his name was Archin, but I always thought Wrinkles suited him better. He glared at every person that got to the front of the queue, snatched their ration card, accused them of theft, sighed and then handed them the appropriate sack of food. He waved them away and continued.
I took in the halo of grey smoke that engulfed any building that was over seven foot, it seemed to circle us more than the Icies who lived up north and had their air cleaners and no factories. The Icies were the rich folk who lived in their beautiful manor houses along the Living River, we rarely saw them but sometimes they paraded through here like tourists. I had resented them for years, ever since a group of prissy Icie girls laughed at my sister Anya and pushed her in the mud. It was so long ago but what can I say? I'm a grudge holder. I moved up the queue a little and raked a dirty hand through my thick red hair, I'd been here for almost an hour, ration day was once a week and terribly inconvenient. Anya and I took it in turns to collect the rations, she never minded and would talk to all the others in the queue around her. She was always more sociable than me, I stood silently and fiddled with the torn edge of our cards. The ration house was in the centre of the Direhill, the village square which was made of cracked concrete stone slabs that were held together by clumps of moss. There had once been shops along the front of each side of the square but they were all boarded up and had been for decades, it hadn't always been like this.
"Hey!" A deep gruff voice shouted over the silence, I turned quickly to see Bue, one of the ex soldiers, body shove a tall gangly teenage boy who fell hard on the stones. I didn't even flinch at the blood that poured from the new gash on his upper arm, it was the normal. The boy probably had an enormous family with several young siblings and sick parents, it was likely he needed to get home quickly. People like Bue, they don't allow queue cutters. Anya would but I always have an elbow ready to jab anyone if they try it.
"Sorry" The boy muttered, he ran off and back down a little alley between boarded up shops. Bue turned to his other white haired bearded friends, they all laughed and patted him on the back. They were the ones who missed active service, they missed being on a battlefield.
I turned back to stare at the back in front of me, the kingdom wasn't kind to lower classes and it showed. We had become the violent and dangerous scum that the Icies and Royals already thought we were.
"Next" Wrinkles bellowed, Niraya, a friend of Anya's from school, walked up to him and placed five cards on the window sill, he glared at her.
"Thank you" She almost whispered but Wrinkles didn't look convinced.
"You have two parents and a brother, Miss Niraya." Wrinkles explained to her, I held my breath for her, the punishment for stealing ration cards was prison but in some cases, death.
"My mother is with-child, they have given us a fifth" Niraya responded with a smirk, Wrinkles smiled sarcastically and gestured to someone on his left, Niraya froze and I could see her chest rising and falling heavily. She was no longer smirking, or confident. She was terrified.
"Thank you, Miss Niraya" Wrinkles picked up the cards and put them to the side, just as an armed man pushed out the boarded up door. He grabbed Niraya by the arm and as he dragged her away she cried out.
"Please wait! I'm not lying! Go see her! There is a baby I swear!" She howled, Wrinkles and Grumps the guard ignored her.
"Next" Wrinkles grumbled, not even showing an inch of guilt for ruining not only Niraya's life but depriving her family of food for a week. She wouldn't even get a trial, she wouldn't leave prison either and from rumours I heard, Tarraros was not a particularly welcoming place. With a lump in my throat, I stepped forward.

A sack of food in one hand, and the same in the other, I fiddled with the door handle. I grunted in frustration, shaking the door wildly until the straps on one of the bags snapped and the food spilled out onto the floor. The door to my right opened a crack and I sighed, I had already begun to pick up the items and required no help from weird neighbour Marco.
"Do not even come near me Marco!" I grumbled, the door just clicked shut and I was hugely relieved, shouldering open the front door quickly. The entryway was small, if you could call it an entryway, it was practically a closet with a couple of hooks and a shoe chest. We lived in a townhouse, just like everyone else, there wasn't much choice in Direhill, or any of the other working towns. Every house looked the same, terraced, black from the smoke and soot, apparently they were once red brick. There weren't even numbers on the doors, only little nails sticking out to remind you that there had been once, so we either knew our home well enough or remembered the number of doors until we got there. It didn't matter if you walked into the wrong house anyway, whoever was inside would shrug and wait for you to leave.
The hooks and chest were on the right, straight ahead led upstairs and to the left was a door. I headed through and into the living space. We had one dirty window and a few wooden boards to cover it at night, like everything else around here, they were rotting. There was a simple square table that housed only two mismatched chairs, there were four but we sold them many years ago. I instantly felt the heat from the rickety little cooker that sat in the corner, next to the makeshift counter that was actually four planks of wood and a bit of plasterboard, that I found in a dump, balanced on top.
Anya was sitting on one of the chairs, her back straight, something she spent days training herself to do, and her eyes trained on her work. She was mending a pair of my old stockings, they were my Sunday stockings from when I was about nine and were no longer of use to me. Anya was definitely the more sentimental sister.
"That didn't take as long as usual" Anya said calmly, she had been humming a basic tune my mother used to sing when we were small, but when she saw me, she instantly stopped.
"There was an arrest, people scattered" I told her, dumping the bags on the plasterboard and decanting the contents: bread, cheese, corned beef, some milk, flour and a tiny pouch of sugar. Those were what were known as the basics, anything else had to be paid for with actual money, someone very few people had a lot of.
"Oh how awful" Anya replied in her higher voice, she truly sympathised with other people, I envied her ability to feel things for people she didn't know. I had to remind myself that she did know Niraya. "Was it someone we know?"
"I think it was one of your old school friends" I said quietly, hoping she wouldn't ask any further questions. But knowing my sister, that's exactly what she did.
"Are you sure? What did she look like?" She quizzed, I could've played it dumb, we did only go to school for the basics like reading and writing so Anya left school when I was about six. Forgetting the names and faces of her old friends seemed easy enough, but as I said, Anya is sociable and keeps in touch.
"It was Niraya" I told her quickly and bluntly, I expected her to cry or get upset but she froze. I thought of repeating it but refocused myself on putting away the rations, letting Anya decide how to react.
"Niraya isn't a thief" She declared.
"Anya-" I started.
"I'm sure Drea, Niraya is not a thief." She repeated, I watched her stitch with more violence, punching the needle through the wool with so much force that it surprised me. Anya rarely showed any anger, only fear and sadness in the appropriate event.
"I was going to say that I agree with you" I replied, "But she had five cards, how?"
"Her mother is having a baby" Anya told me what Niraya told Wrinkles and my breath hitched in my throat.
"Then she was telling the truth"
"What do you mean?" Anya put the stocking down and leaned back a little in a seat.
"Niraya told the ration man that the card was for the baby, he didn't believe her" I recounted what had happened just an hour ago, Anya looked horrified and I felt awful.
"And now she's gone forever" Anya whispered, we both went silent until she jumped into life. "I should tell her family, it's only right"
"Anya, we have to go soon" I reminded her, on Mondays we did an afternoon shift at the tech factory, it had just struck eleven and we started at one.
"They deserve to know" She told me, then grabbed her coat and disappeared into the smoke. My heart had been sinking since I got home and at that moment it was sat on the floor between my feet. Niraya was excited, she had extra food for her family and a sibling on the way, she saw a future. Now she was stuck in a prison cell, for the rest of her life. Maybe they will have mercy and just kill her, I thought. I pinched myself quickly for the dreadful idea. Despite knowing I would much rather die than be stuck in a cell and be called a thief for the rest of my life. I couldn't help but picture Niraya when her and Anya were at school, a simple girl like the rest of us, two dark brown braids and bright sparkly hazel eyes. Her head was probably already shaved and the sparkle in her eyes gone, the minute she set foot in Tarraros.
I spent the next two hours staring at a hole in the wall and worrying about those six stolen cards I kept under my pillow upstairs.