All The Lies We Told Ourselves

1 - The Bluebirds

Rue

*****

February 25th, Monday

The market clearing was blazing red that night.

Rising smoke softened every edge and point so you could barely tell where each building started and another began. The fire made the world around us disappear. Everything was flames and smoke and paper burning at the edges.

My mom used to make me read this boring book about an ant colony in a burning forest, some metaphor for human societies. It was probably meant for kids way older than five, but she used to say we live for metaphors, Rue, don't ever forget that.  But I had better things to do, sticks to collect and bugs to catch. Now that I thought about it, that pile of burning books in the market clearing looked like an ant colony ablaze, eaten up by its own impossibility.

It was the 30th book burning in the 150 years of the province's existence. I would remember it later because it would be the last one.

Like all the times before, the "peace keepers" as they called themselves, had marched their way to the outskirts, to the last bit of open space left inside these walls, and they had raided the homes nearby, taking away their stories. Taking away their family members and friends, deemed too dangerous to the province. They were getting suspicious, I guess.

I was thankful our house lay at the edge of the outskirts. Had the peacekeepers gotten to our home, our heads would be on the wall before the books had charred and the sun had come up.

For all the capitol cared about their own people, they wouldn't spare a thought for the rest of us.

The wind turned and pushed the smoke down so it covered those standing where I was. Next to me, just under the layer of smoke, two children not much taller than a foot, stood looking at the fire, their faces gray with dust like the people in my sister's charcoal drawings.

The crackle of the flame mixed with a shouting coming from the building behind me. I turned to see one of the doors on the ground level open. A woman was being dragged out of her house by peacekeeper guards, her hands cuffed and legs flailing on the cobblestone. The peacekeepers with their navy colored suits were barely visible in the dark.

I knew her. Not personally, but she sold meat down at the market. My mom would send me there, back when we could still afford it. "What do you want?" The woman would ask with a tired look on her face like I was a nuisance, only there to interrupt her blissful quiet. And then she would charge my pockets empty for a piece of poorly hunted rabbit. Well anyway, selling meat in the outskirts was banned. It would get you on the wall.

One of the guards standing by the door glanced at me and I clutched the knife in my pocket, trailing the wooden handle with my fingers. I should wait a while, I thought. If I leave now, I'll seem suspicious. So I waited, blending in with everyone else watching the fire, until the doorway of the building was empty and all that was left was the woman's red headscarf on the ground.

Walking away from the fire, the noise and light slowly faded away. I was at the far side of the market square when I spotted Freya standing at the corner of a tall building. She seemed a bit intimidating from far away. Tall and broad-shouldered as she was, Freya looked like the type to shake you off your feet with a tap on the shoulder.

I didn't know what she was really like. We had only met a couple times before. From the little information I had been able to gather, she worked at the warehouse near the wall. That's probably where she got all the stuff I had to pay a high price for. Anyway, none of that mattered to me now. She had what I needed.

I walked to the corner of the building and handed her the money I had brought. The money I had scrounge together from selling rabbit and dove. Illegal, yes, but it paid well. Besides, almost anything to do with making a living in the outskirts was illegal. So what would it have mattered anyway?