The Potentate - ON HOLD

III

I am sitting in a cell. I think it is underground. There is no window. There is only a small, dying lightbulb. I have a bed, but I am still sitting on the floor. It is cold. I am alone. This is all I can be sure of at the moment.

I have made a habit of repeating these facts like a mantra to avoid facing the harsh reality: my life, so carefully built on lies and falsehoods, has come tumbling down around me, and the pieces are going to fall like bricks on the people that I love. It is not I who will suffer the most for my mistakes, but my family, who will starve and wither in winter without me to provide for them.

Slate and Ottie will try to hunt, I know. But they also tried to hunt before, and they still needed me to steal. Now how will they supplement their meager catches? Will they force Levi and Isaiah to replace me, to risk their lives regularly just so they can have dinner every night?

My heart clenches. I don't know how I would go on living if there was even a possibility that my two sweet boys were in pain. Since the day I found them, they are the only two beings on this earth I have ever been capable of saving, and failure isn't an option.

I replay the day I found them over and over again in my head. I was only thirteen; they were barely a year old. They were huddled in a basket on the side of the road, bruised and bloodied. I was wearing my favorite dress, but that didn't stop me from scooping them both into my arms and cradling them to my chest.

When Yaz saw me, she thought I was weeping because their blood had seeped into my dress and ruined it, but she was wrong. I was crying because I was holding two tiny humans, both incapable of hurting anyone, and yet someone had attacked them, and they were probably going to die, and I didn't understand how life could possibly be so unfair.

Now I am seventeen and I still don't see why good people feel the most pain out of everyone in the world. I don't get why I have to steal to live, or why I had to get caught. There are times when life, not just mine, but everyone's, seems like one great amalgamation of tragedies, and I am genuinely horrified by that.

I don't know how long I've been pondering the cruelty of the world when Calix enters. I just know that I feel embarassed to be crying when I see him. After all, I was robbing his family. Why shouldn't I be punished?

"I'm not supposed to be here," he begins. "But I thought you should know that you're not going to be stuck in here forever."

"What?" For a moment, I allow myself to naively hope they will release me, and send me on my way with a warning. Of course, this is an astonishingly idiotic daydream.

"After a while, you'll get a real room. It'll still be underground, but it will be a lot nicer than this. Nicer than most of the places you've been, I bet. And you'll be able to meet the others, too, who've been here longer than you. They'll help you get used to all this."

"What others?" I blurt suspiciously. Other prisoners?

"Right. You're new," Calix grimaces, more to himself than to me. He sighs before starting again. "My grandfather is the leader of something called the Potentate. Basically, he finds people like you, who are obviously having a hard time, and he helps them."

"Helps them," I repeat. "Right." I pause. "And how exactly does he do that?"

"Well, it started out as him teaching survival skills to people, but when he got older, that was kind of out of the question. So he found some of his old students, and now they teach. By the time you're out of here, you'll know everything you need to know to stay alive."

"What if I don't want to learn?" I ask in a small voice. "What if I want to go home?"

"You can go home. You just have to pass a test first."