The Cipher

Chapter one

  At times, life will make you feel like you are climbing a mountain. But once you climb that mountain; once you’ve reached its culmination and are descending its peak, you will find there to be another mountain. A bigger, much more treacherous mountain than the latter. In that moment, you will realize the mountain you had been climbing was a grain of sand in comparison to what is coming next.

                                                                              ***

  I was sipping a very putrid brew of tea, watching as the tendrils of steam evanesced into the air. Cyrus had collected herbs from the woods outside of our tiny, poorly constructed log cabin to create my meager refreshment. The centerpiece of our meager abode was not a beautiful fireplace, or piece of art, but a bloodied, dying man.

  This man had been a messenger, a very important messenger named Axel. He came to us to ask us to join him. To ask us to join him in becoming rebels along with my wonderful brother, Shields back in the Society. A city of corruption populated by its blinded citizens. Blind by, of course, the government in which is stationed there; HQ.

  But, as Axel lay broken and deathly upon our floor, I knew that something had gone wrong. A gut instinct told me that there was something more urgent to Axel’s visit, not just to seek out our admittance or denial of joining the rebels. He was not due to obtain our replies for at least another week, it seemed. And the more Cyrus and I discussed, we realized that indeed it was the case. Not to mention the fact that he showed up at our doorstep on the verge of death.

  We did everything in our power to save Axel, but sadly, Cyrus and I knew not a thing about medical care. The only person who could be of any help would be Aurora, but, Cyrus and I’s hearts were too heavy to say why she could not help.

  She would never be able to help again, and we both knew it.

  Axel stayed with us for nine days.

  The first few days after Axel’s arrival were hopeful, he was getting better, actually. We did what we knew, and we cleaned his cuts, and we iced his bruises and swollen joints. He spoke to us on the third day.

  “You must go.” he said with a strangled voice.

  I looked into his eyes, in which looked so hopeless, giving me a grim feeling in my stomach. His long curly blonde locks were matted with blood, and his clothes were stained with it as well.

  On the fourth day, I washed and combed his hair, and I gave him a change of clothes. This way, he looked more peaceful as he lay in the middle of our cabin, dying.

  On the fifth day, our hopes of his survival began to dwindle. Any color that had come back into his face had begun to fade, and when we searched for the cause, we found a large cut that had turned yellow with pus, and had purple veins spider-webbing outwards from it.

  “Infection.” Cyrus had told me.

  On the sixth day, I recognized the symptoms; as I had once been riddled with the same ones, except for the face that I survived, and Axel would not. The sixth day was extremely difficult for me. As Cyrus sat stoically in the corner, I sat over Axel’s body, sobbing.

  “Darling.” Axel consoled me.

  I should have been consoling him, but I hadn’t the strength. It was so soon after Aurora, Kian, and Jensen’s deaths, it wasn’t fair for Axel to die, too. It just wasn’t fair.

  “You must go.” his voice was still weak, but to me, it sounded like an anthem. A call to war. But, the thought was very short-lived, and any motivation I had dissipated just as it had before.

  “But I must stay.” I told him, attempting to hide the breaks in my speech.

  He shook his head, seemingly being the only thing he could do.

  I looked to Cyrus to see his reaction, but Cyrus sat in one of our homely rocking chairs, unmoving, and staring at the wall.

  “Cyrus.” I said to him.

  He did not reply.

  “Cyrus.” I repeated.

  He did not reply.

  “Cyrus get your ass down here!” I began to sob into Axel’s shirt, ruining the new clothes I had put upon him.

  “Cyrus, how dare you do this right now!” I shrieked at him, watching his statue-like face continue to stare at the wall.

  He had done this before. There were times where he didn’t register my actions, or his own, or anything at all. A tornado could have plowed down the entire house and he wouldn’t have noticed. After the second occasion of this, I broke down, losing all of my dignity.

  Our lives were falling apart.

  “Cyrus.” I whispered, quietly this time, after minutes of screeching sobs. “Please come back to me. He is dying.”

  I gently lay Axel’s head on the pillow, seeming to be the only thing in the bare cabin. I crawled across the floor to Cyrus where I placed my hands on his knees, and beckoned him to return from his hypnosis of grief and despair.

  How did it feel to be so grief-stricken; so hopeless, that you didn’t even register the things around you?

  Upon the seventh day, I left Axel alone, too selfish to walk into the room again. Too busy thinking of how broken I was. How broken Cyrus was. I began to play the “what if” game.

  What if we had never escaped the Society? What if I had never broken my leg falling down those stairs? What if I had just died of infection in Cyrus’s bed?

  What if I had simply never knocked on that door? What if, on my Journey, I had simply walked away, left to the Society and claimed my Soul Mate had died?

  Cyrus would be alive and happy. So would Kian, Jensen and Aurora. I would be happy enough in the Society, still too brainwashed to even realize that something was wrong. If I had walked away, Cyrus wouldn’t be in a stark silent world of depression, staring blankly at the wall. Three more people would be alive in the world, and Axel would be living a normal life. Any civilians or HQ officials injured or killed in battle would never have been assaulted in the first place, and The Land would have been the exact same. My brother may have never started the rebel group, but it was a price I would be willing to pay to spare such innocent lives.

  The eighth day, Cyrus came back from his coma of woe and despair. He asked me how I was doing, and I simply said that I was fine, in fear of telling him the whole truth.

  The ninth day, Axel died. I fell into a heap of tears and sadness upon the floor, unable to cope with any more death.

  I refused to eat, even when Cyrus tried to feed me, and I refused to move, except to go to the bathroom. And after a two day fast, I began to not have to use the restroom. I felt myself grow skinnier and weaker.

  You see, there are two types of pain; emotional and physical. But in that cabin, as I fasted and was never hungry; as I sat in a similar silence to Cyrus’s, speaking nothing but a few words a day, I realized that I was  neither in physical nor emotional pain. I created a new classification of pain; it’s the kind of pain that doesn’t hurt your heart or your body; but it hurt your soul; the very core of your being.

  Being stripped of everything and anything you love will do that to you. Especially right after you learned what love was, and how beautiful it could be. Especially after learning how wonderful the world would be if everybody only loved.

  But after everyone you love dies, or you watch them wither away from despair, you learn to realize the world will never be full of love.

  Mother nature is relentless, and so are her people.